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Time to get this off my chest. Alright, this thread has been spurred out of both seeing @CountVonNumenor's thread about burnout and also the general state of the Touhou fanbase on other sites, most notably Reddit (which has been going through a ditch), in which most Touhou fans/internet denizens seem to be downright oblivious/blind to changes or downright hostile to those who are protesting changes which keep the site aware of the users and keep it useful to everyone. To give a synopsis for clarity, I'm going to cover how Touhou fans existed throughout the years and how the internet changed the Fandom from a mostly creative fandom to a sanitized corporate outcome over the years, which inspires no creativity. Some of it will talk about Touhou, some will not, given that this sort of thing can apply to any fandom that exists on corporate-owned websites and not fandom owned. This kind of progression is why I'm giving the outlook a Terribad stamp due to the short attention spans of Touhou fans and the rabid tribalism of people justifying how Reddit is right in their horrible changes which will shoot them right back in the butt. This is sort of the expansion of the forum thread about attention spans here: This discussion is for people who have an attention span. (You know who you are ) Information will be kept into spoiler sections in order to save on scrolling. This is all based on my own opinions on what has occurred over the years. 1. The Start of the Internet (Touhou Fans Eating Good) This kind of discussion will talk about the early internet | around the <2000> s 2. The Rotting Starts (Sanitization and blandness starts) Hmmm, this probably started around the 2008-2020 this is when sites started to go corpo mode and start profiteering off the users. 3. What it is now◝(^⌣^)◜--> ^o^ --> n-n (People capitulate to Greed for instant satsifaction) The complete change of culture in Touhou | 2020-Present Time to act as a boomer, even though I was born at the time in which old forums were going out. 4. Burnout Zone (Opinion on why the fandom is at an all time low for creativity) So how is this going to end up? (Conclusion - Touhou fans and everyone hate everyone else) What are you looking at?

Well I've been waiting a bit out from playing touhou bcs of exams...but I've never thought that I could really lose touch with it. It's not a real worry of mine, but I think I only got a little "out of line". Since I started playing touhou bcs I wanted to accute my vision I didn't expect this can happen anymore xd But, after all this happened. I think that I can fix this "problem" playing a bitter much, I don't mean "in a regular basis" but...two times a week? that could work...at least for me.

That's very normal. Touhou only has so much official content (fan content mostly re-use official content, often in predictable ways so it's not as interesting) , and after almost 3 years you probably seen it all. Probably because every game/manga are just "incident of the week". Barely anything matter in the plot, so it's hard getting excited about "yet another incident". This is meant to be enjoyed casually, so you probably won't feel very "hyped". Take time to enjoy other series, and come back when you want a more relaxing and simple story. You know how many never even gave the games a chance? Don't force yourself if you don't like the gameplay, or stick to playing on Easy with Continues if you think you got skill issues, then move on from there to Easy 1CC, then Normal (since some game lock you out of the ending if you play on easy). Forget about Hard and Lunatic unless you really enjoy the game. Almost every game can be beaten very, well, easily on easy (10-11-12 are using the "bad" continue system, so use a patch if you don't want to repeat stages a lot). My personal recommendation is 7, since the "Cherry Border" give you a temporary shield you can use to practice dodging without worrying about getting hit. Well, being a "Touhou fan" isn't some kind of holy duty that you "have" to do. Touhou is just a multi-media series that you can enjoy or not. You don't have to like everything about it, and you don't have to always be talking about Touhou 24/7 (doing so makes for a pretty one-note and boring life). Just go with how you fell. You like it and are curious to discover more? Continue on ahead. Feeling like you've seen enough and want to move to the next thing? Go ahead, there's no Touhou police that's going to prevent you from doing so. There's no prestige to gain in enjoying something, only personal fun.

As some of you may have noticed, I have barely been active at the Moriya Shrine forum for the past months. For anyone wondering, I am still doing fine, I have just been a little busy with college life and trying to get through all my courses. However, there is another question that rose - am I slowly losing interest in this series? Background I have discovered Touhou somewhere in October 2020. Ever since, I have become increasingly hooked up into this fictional world, along with all the creations fans have put up. I feel like the peak of my activity in the Touhou community started in early 2022, as I finally joined this forum and became very active in discussing a series that I really enjoyed. Things started to change, however, as 2023 started to march on... There are a few symptoms I have noticed: 1. I have become less active in discussions about Touhou As mentioned earlier, I have been less active than I would have liked for the past months. In the past, I used to roll a thread every few days, and maintain discussion about it in tens of essay-sized comments. Today though, I think this is probably my first thread in weeks, if not outright months. A lot of the energy I used to have is simply gone, and I really need something that would help me get back at it. 2. I have started to find other series that caught my interest A warning sign for that started when I opened up the threads about other series people like, along with the discussions about other series and anime in general. First cracks started to appear in January-Febraury this year. That was when I first got my attention diverted to another series, that being Amagami. As time went on, things went a little wild, as what started as a curiosity about the world and characters of Kancolle and Azur Lane ended up with me playing the latter. (what can I say, I just believe Ise is pretty, and Hood has a very sweet and elegant demeanor). As time went on, I started to pay less attention to what was going on with Touhou, and focused more on what I thought I was enjoying at the time. I thought I was just picking a new series in order to keep myself fresh and avoid a Touhou burnout, but it seems like new the new things I discover keep me away from Touhou. 3. I am not feeling as excited anymore about new Touhou things Back in my first months of being a Touhou fan, I remember that I used to be extremely excited for the announcement of Touhou 18. For comparison, nowadays I am barely aware of the fact Touhou 19 is gong to be released (actually, I have plenty of moments in which I am even forgetting there is going to be a 19th mainline game). Same is going for the official literature. I am not feeling any thrill anymore for the release of a new chapter from the ongoing manga series (not that I even kept so much in touch with them outside the CDS capter which gave us Mizuchi). Probably my greatest moment of excitement was when I bought the entire Forbidden Scrollery collection, but it's been already a year since I bought the first volume, and I still have two more to read. One more example would be that of listening to Akatsuki Records, In the past, I was keeping up with all of their new music videos, but for the past months, I have skipped three songs in a row. I have told myself I need to get back and listent to them, but I have yet to do so... I really need to see what their ost recent songs are like (last one I kept up with was the Sekibanki song). Actually, I think I have barely listened to any Touhou music recently, the only saving saving grace being that I kept on listening to Ghostly Field Club and Changeability of Strange Dream. 4. I still have not got to finish (or even just play) any related game, be it official or fan-made This is something that I have also said at the end of last year, when I was writing the question if I am a bad fan of the series. The only game I have tried is Touhou 7, and I could even finish that one. SKILL ISSUES GALORE. I have not managed to find yet any fan game that I really wanted to play, and I do not know if Touhou LostWord really counts as an actual game (and not just a gambling machine masked as a Touhou game)... 5. I have lost a big art of my diligence in collecting things that I like In the past, I was always very curious and excited for whatever new Touhou fanart was being posted online. I used to collect them on a daily basis (which I am doing since December 2020), then I used to stored them on my Pinterest gallery (shameless plugin moment). However, despite the fact I am still doing it, I am just feeling less excited. I have better tools for finding more images, but it takes me more days until I actually send them to my favorites gallery. Until then, they are just clogging the tabs of the browser. Basically, what used to be a fun activity has become a chore. And I cannot just stop doing it, mostly due to FOMO (a general problem for me with anything Touhou related, and probably compatible with all of the points above). So, what is going on with me? Are those signs I am on the verge of dropping my position as someone who likes the series? Have I lost my passion for Touhou? Am I less and less interested for what is going on in the community? And even worse - what still keeps me as a Touhou fan? So many questions...

I've been on the internet for a long time, I've seen many people come and go in a blink of an eye, especially in fandoms. I cannot stress how sterile and saturated everything feels nowadays, I rarely sense a feel of community on most sites anymore, I feel like the longer you stay in one circle of a fan base the more likely you'll end up burning out in my opinion. With the current state of the touhou fandom I can only express disappointment towards the lack creators willing stop outside the box and make something that isn't another cutesy or "funny" meme, sure we have some fans who make some high-quality content but that pales in comparison to someone who has step outside the boundaries of is typically done in a Touhou fanwork (I think), it's just a shame sites like YouTube, Reddit or Twitter don't promote this kind of thing, people are too afraid to step outside their comfort zones. It's a shame honestly since I do believe there are creative and inspiring fans who can make beautiful works art and yet that rarely (if not, ever) happens at all. After my experience with Touhou on YouTube I can say that I am not optimistic for the possibilities for video makers since they pretty recycle meme formats in order to gain views or they just play it safe and make something by the books basic by making the characters cute but with no substance behind it or worse make videos pandering to the lowest common denominator and appeal to horny weebs with AMSR videos while neglecting the fact the characters would never do this in canon, I'm also tried of all the hype behind fumos since there so over hyped up by man children who pay for these overpriced plush dolls that are limited in stock anyway, you can enjoy these thing all you want but I just find all this to be ridiculous, call me a pretentious asshole all you want but when things are so depraved of humanity or decency then it becomes a problem when a fanbase loses touch with reality and becomes a joke of itself, a shell of it former self. I feel like the whole "Less work = More points" thing on the internet has overstayed it's welcome and has done more harm than good, everything is monitored and when you do something slightly risky like say: bring up dark topics of death, trauma, mental illness, dark humor ETC. Than you're likely to meet with disapproval but it depends on how dark the subject is, I get some people are not comfortable with it but at the same time why does everyone have to be concerned with safety all the time? I swear at this point censorship is going to get so bad to the point where it's all just sparkles and rainbows on screen. Feel free to disagree with me, honestly I wish I could write more but honestly I don't know what more I can say.

For these kinds of situations, I don't recommend overthinking because it could give the opposite effect of what you want. I found out about Touhou in 2019, which is when I created an account in Moriya Shrine (despite only started talking here recently). I became very obsessed with the games and played them a lot, but then years later, in 2022, I started not caring as much about Touhou, so I just took a break until I truly felt like I wanted to play again, and so I returned to the games. You can take a break and focus on something else, and come back later and realise that now you are much more interested in the series after the break, or you could give the official games another chance, since you said you only played th7.

I love and would definitely wear any of these hats: Doremy's hat: A pajama hat that looks like a Santa hat, it fits Doremy perfectly Suwako's hat: You can't go wrong with this hat, it fits many outfit choices. The eyes give it a lot of personality and it's cute and goofy Yuyuko's hat: A nice hat that fits a lot of clothing styles with similar colour palettes. Has a cool ghostly spiral logo that coincidentally looks like Debian's logo Koishi's hat: A cool hat for similar reasons to Suwako's hat, but without the funny frog personality eyes. Will most likely need a clothing setup with a fitting colour palette Mai and Satono: SHOE Mamizou: LEAF

I've felt this way a few times before, and even a bit of it currently. The passion you have begins to evaporate and burnout sets in. Taking a break helps, but something feels like it's been lost along the way during it, and what should be a break to get some time to relax corrupts itself into a sort of FOMO. Though, like Space Banana says, don't overthink it. Trust me, you end up trapped in your own head spiraling downwards with worries. Same. TH19 doesn't really excite me, and CDS has been agony to both wait for and read (only really care about LE atm when it comes to official content coming out). Perfectly normal. There's nothing wrong about being a fan of other things and getting invested when stuff starts getting interesting with it. Azur Lane, huh? I started that way back when the Neptunia crossover event was going on. I had a cycle of putting it down for a while, picking it back up, and so on. Now there's a ton of new content that seems intimidating to start going through with my (probably) out-of-date ships. At least you gave the games a try, even if it ended up not being a thing you're into. I'm a casual fan when it comes to shmup games, so I never really go higher than Normal unless the game feels like it's too easy. I approach the mainline Touhou games with a mindset of "enjoyment-first", and "skill-and-challenging-myself" if it clears the first part. I honestly recommend 14.3, 18.5, or really any of the scene-shooter side shmups if you wanna give the mainline gameplay style another go at some point.

Don't worry Count! It's natural to get saturated, especially in your case, as you literally wrote essays on a semi-daily basis about Touhou. Just give it time and you will gain the enthusiasm back. You don't have to stay involved in the community to say that you "like Touhou", do what you enjoy. As Space Banana says, try enjoying another part of Touhou. Some ideas: Search for more remixes of the music, play the fighting games, play other main games (16, 10 and 5 are on the easier side, and it inspires me to play them, they are just soo pretty).

I’ve got burnout on monster hunter and still find myself coming back to it. You can enjoy a series even when you wanna be involved with other ones. I’d say it be fine to maybe just take a break and enjoy what other series you wanna enjoy, instead of worrying about not being a fan of another series. Overall, just play and get involved in what is enjoyable to you and don’t worry about it.

still a banger