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Do you know what is one thing I miss from the old days of the internet? OCs, Original Characters. For all the cringey self-inserts, Donut Steel jokes and recolors of Sonic the Hedgehog, there was a charming innocence to them. Most were a child or teen’s attempt at creating something new for a world they loved. Some did not fit the source material, but felt genuinely good enough to have their own story. Others fit flawlessly. For some reason though, I seldom see people talk about their Original Characters today. I’m not sure if it’s gone out of vogue with the rise of multiplayer games or I just don’t know where to find them. Touhou itself I have seen few OCs for, though I am sure there were a number of them in the 00s. The material is ripe for creativity, and there are OCs I have seen referenced as characters in fan games. In fact, I am willing to bet that all of you had an OC at some point. In honor of the innocence of youth and the joys of creation, let’s play a game. Post a character meant for the world of Gensokyo that you or someone else made. Write a little bit about them, their backstory and motivation. Any stories about them which make you proud or make you cringe. I’ll start, even if mine is a little unusual. A few months ago, I was having burnout from tabletop games, which have been largely the same in the West for more than a decade. D&D makes up the lion’s share of the game space, and most other big games imitate it. To shake me out of my rut, I had a group of friends on Discord pick out an indie or fan game they enjoyed the look of and we would run it. On the list was Danmaku Yuugi Flowers. A Touhou fan game I had put on the list for how different it was. My game was set in a homebrew world, but I wanted the characters to be authentic to Touhou's style. Starting my slide into the fandom. Naturally, a tabletop game needs NPCs. My first creation for the world was a vampire named Hope Black. I wanted to give her a wholesome, Midwest country girl vibe. Though I also designed her to be an inversion of Remilia. Instead of opulent glamor, she has a homely charm. She lives alone in a log cabin, and keeps a farm on her own. She’s also one of the guardians of the land, who I really should come up with a name for. Though she is still new to the role and uncertain in herself. I wish I could tell you more about her and what the others thought. Sadly my workload at my day job has spiked again, keeping us from playing. So now I am just left with this character concept and a doodle I made over a lunch break.

when my mom does my hair (even though i can clearly do it myself), it hurts a lot. so i wail/scream(?); and when i do that, she hits me on the head with a comb and calls me out for "acting like a little girl". she also does this when i do something like kicking the table (i'm exaggerating this but yeah) or picking my nose (don't call me disgusting, it's a habit.). after all of this she tells me to go to my room. this is not a joke. this is a cry for help.

So then the brain rot is intentional, is what you're saying? Also, even if they did let you read at your pace, the book selection is generally not what students want to read or there are elitist faculty and staff that believe 'comics' or 'light novels' or other 'non-classical' books to count as books/reading. But yea it's odd that learning is made un-fun, but then things like YT/social media/etc. are so easy to access. It's like healthy food vs junk food. Books would be like veggies which are good for you, but most students prefer the candy and snacks as they taste yummier, are easier to wolf down, generally more inexpensive in terms of bulk/money and because of their lack of nutritional value, the body is still 'hungry' and wont stop craving it. Sounds great! I'll DM you and we can discuss it in detail. Like with working out, maybe you need a 'spotter' to help you out and motivate you? Some people are willing to work out and genuinely get fit/healthy but can only really be motivated to do so with another. They help each other out, making sure that they don't neglect their goals and such. Also prismrivers have a lot of potential often being the first ones you think of regarding music/sound and being the only group of 3 siblings as the dynamic between 2 siblings vs 3 siblings is very different (most sibling pairings in Touhou are 2). They can also work with Mystia/Kyouko to form a band lol.

Salutations, my dear friend

I give the greetings to you my friend

Well then, the fact that the school system makes the new generation dislike books by forcing them to read books with a time limit, thus disallowing a full meditation on the subjects discussed, would not help the fight against brain-rot. I personally know of myself that whatever is popular in my home country is extremely likely to be something I hate with every single fibre of my being. With very few exceptions. The fact that it has a time limit is especially damaging to my own style of meditation on any given subject, as I like to reach my full conclusion on it before reading further. I also cross-reference the newfound conclusion I reached with other similar ones I reached earlier to see if there are any other subjects I can apply such a philosophy to to speed up future reading and or meditation. And I have a limited amount of meditation space, making any reading I do be whenever I don't have any meditation to do. Leading to me basically never reading as the time limit would also still be enforced due to loaning. In essence, because I take my sweet time thinking about the philosophical nature of the books I read, or the philosophical nature I see the books use, I stress about meditating on the subject faster, which makes it slower, that then means that I essentially give up on actually reading the book due to the loan. I have thus completely given up on reading what I do not own. ...Perhaps if you throw an idea in the ring we could perhaps put up a topic on Eientei or wherever it would best fit as a start. In fact, there was a little short story in Gensokyo I made just for fun. Though I am going to have to dig around for it. Maybe that could be a baseline?

you're absolutely right! WE NEED MORE HATATE!!!

She looks so simple, but for some reason i like her. Like, i'm not fan of Mary Sues but i actually made a little pixelart for her! Why i did this? Why not?, I mean, i can also experiment some things and make your OC more cooler (i decided to do some changes for the original design because welp it's MS Paint) , also it's a long time that i didn't do other sprites about other users OC's more than MY OCs, and some characters from other games i like besides Touhou. Overwise, i had fun doing this! May i can do more if i'm on a mood and have time.

Ah, yes, OC's, a microcosm of your own character development. You draw from your own experiences about the world to create them and call for them to help guide you in the eternal march of life towards death. My OC... well, there's an entire history for her. While I never designed her to be a Gensokyan, the entire reason I created her was as a self-insert that could fit everywhere. Originally called Nyoko Hakui, she first went through multiple story arcs as I was going through them in FNAF and later Undertale. I don't remember every single franchise she went through, but eventually, likely due to a desire to stave off boredom, she got killed. There was another OC ready to replace her, of course. This new person, named Shinso Hakui, came into being shortly after I discovered Touhou, I think. Yet my imagination acts in mysterious ways where I have to work to actually catch a story, so she might've existed before then. Why all that history? Well, I have had to attend enough funerals for a lifetime, and my parents still live... I suppose Shinso here was my brain trying to grasp the concept of having my parents funeral in my lifetime. Shinso, while filling the role of Nyoko, still has a different personality. In a way, if I ever were to cross-reference the decisions Shinso made with the decisions Nyoko would have made, I'd come with two different universes. Shinso, while maybe not made for Gensokyo again, does enjoy living in Gensokyo and if I were to ever retire the character, she would choose the place. As for her actual place she comes from... well, I call it Yru. Yru is a future where the Earth has gone to hell and hasn't come back yet. Humanity got destroyed by aliens and experimented upon by them turning some into creatures similar to catgirls (with two tails and they call themselves Nekomata... I'm not hiding my inspiration there.) or people with wings for arms. Those were then sent to a planet named Yru that the aliens commit suicide on. The same substance that causes the aliens to commit suicide also summons lesser beings of a faith, (It does not care which.) and allows some people to perform feats of magic. It is in this Universe that Shinso was born in, as a (Shinto) Nekomata, she exists purely for vengeance. Her adoration of humans prevents her from being vengeful towards her, so she directs her anger towards the aliens who put the humans in this poor position. I'll also mention that those aliens caused a particular part of the planet to always be devoid of a sun. Yet she is also powerful enough to be considered a Kasha, which makes her an interesting character in her own right. She appears as a Nekomata in her everyday form, wearing the usual black full-body suit of the Nekomata of the Eternal Night. Though she has been trying out more casual clothes as of recent. She has full-on bloodred eyes, though not bloodshot ones. Quite tall for our standards, standing at just over two meters. But average for that universe, and considering that Shinso needs to fit in, you can infer why she chose that tall. I explain this with the real world example of breeding to make people giant, which worked in Prussia and Darwin even gave that as an example for his theory of evolution. She has pure black hair and keeps semi-long so it doesn't get in the way of her view when battling. Thanks for reading this far. I encourage you to be inquisitive about things you don't understand or want more information about; I'll be happy to answer you... Though now I have my reservations about the legality of such things. I can hardly remain on topic for half the post, now can I?

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?