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not good enough. Genre: Ship Doujinshi Pages: 13 Release Date: June 16th, 2020 Language: English By: jiayi (bunbun) Book Source: Gumroad =========================== A short MariAli book for today, featuring a little pouting from Marisa about her perceived inadequacy when compared to Alice. Fortunately, Alice reminds Marisa that she too, has her own strengths that Alice does not have. The story is what I describe as sweet and soft as there isn’t much of a deeper conflict aside from the one conflict Marisa has, which is resolved by Alice. Not much development, but this fault can be explained by how jiayi was pressed for time to release this book by MariAli day. That aside, I will state my opinion on Touhou ships. I am neutral on them, rather how much I enjoy a Touhou ship depends on how well the writing develops the ship. In my opinion, I prefer a more realistic/humanistic approach to relationships between Touhou characters; a focus on the more tinder moments. More explicit feelings should be risen to and not be handled out so freely as to me that feels like an unrealistic relationship that feels wishful. It should be acknowledged that my opinion would conflict with the reason to write such ship stories, to describe an impossible relationship under social norms, which is why I would like to say I like to mention one example of a “ship” story. Higan's Camellia is a KomAkyuu story that has excellent buildup of drama as Komachi realizes the consequences of befriending a child of the Miare. The buildup of drama is done as the Akyuu’s days to death come closer and closer, while Komachi tries to pull some strings at the Ministry of Right and Wrong to see if there is a way to save Akyuu before everything is said and done. When Akyuu’s death day arrives, a ceremony that acts both as her funeral and as her transport to the Ministry of Right and Wrong starts, with her executor being none other than Komachi. The tension is at its highest. While the events described in Higan Camellia do not reflect in the Outside World, the drama makes their relationship truly heartfelt as both Komachi and Akyuu have to consider how their relationship should continue given their unique life circumstances to each other. Higan Camellia is not just a relationship of love but also describes the steps to their relationship. And to tie this back to my opinion on ships, this simply creates writing that is more in-depth, and more humanistic for its given ship. Of course, the amount of drama in Higan Camellia is not required for me to like a ship story. Echoing Hearts is focused more on the moment-to-moment lifestyle of Kyoko and Kutaka, and that visual novel was one I felt needed the best rating for the writing category in Touhou Pride Game Jam 5. Simply put, I like to see the microcosms that come with such relationships, and as such I like to end this entry by returning to not good enough with a concluding line: seeing the lighter moments can be good relief all on its own.

I might have many hobbies but I'm sort of mediocre at all of them :/ If only my skills run as deep as they are wide... Also, it's cool your love for drawing first came from an interest in game design. I've heard of many illustrators and music producers that initially wanted to make things for video games, but instead just became really good artists normally! Oh yeah, I definitely get what you mean. I guess in my previous reply I was thinking about games and music- completely forgot that drawings can't be so easily modified and preserved. Also, the thing about forcing yourself to commit to a project is it can quickly lead to burnout. Sometimes you really might be leading yourself to a dead end, so be careful. But one healthy method to stay motivated is doing it for a person/purpose/deadline. I've made drawings for my friend's birthday, for my song cover, and for cirno day. It works really well for me because I plan several days ahead, and make sure everything looks good before sharing my work publicly. Thanks for the advice! Using drawn references is smart. And I suppose I should start sketching with a lighter pencil because I've always felt like my sketching gets in the way. I love making hard techno, hardstyle, and other similar styles of electronic music. Just anything I can dance to (which is yet another hobby of mine). All touhou remixes, of course! I don't even know music theory, I just use midi files . I post my works on youtube, although they're uploaded alongside some of my other cringy videos so I won't show it here, sorry :P

When we were introducing ourselves for the RP thread, you said that the Touhou Reading Log thread was very interesting. I would like to inquire on the reasons why you found the thread interesting as feedback on the log, and also to know what was your reaction to the works introduced on the thread. This is all to say that appreciated your comment on the reading log. Thank you.

Ask Kogasa - A Lonely Umbrella Genre: Full Color Comic Pages: 31 Release Date: May 8th, 2017 Language: English By: Rubin Book Source: Itch.io Page =========================== I wonder when the first purple umbrellas were created? Well, it doesn’t matter to Kogasa now that she lives in Gensokyo. Rubin has a nice brush texture and color palette to go along with the scenes such that Kogasa’s emotions feels more proactive with this woven atmosphere. The backgrounds are very empty, but the colors of the Touhou characters serve to stand them out. Anyway, not much to say other than mention this comic was created as a response to multiple asks on the Tumblr blog Ask Kogasa. There some more lovely art and animations of Kogasa on there, but the real power of Ask Blogs was the ability to converse with a fictional character and get a response from them. For now, it serves as a nice art gallery that reflects a form of internet culture long gone from now.

Captain Murasa’s Stories Genre: Naval History | Artbook Release Date: August 27th, 2013 Language: Russian By: U-Joe Book Source: Deviant Art =========================== A foreign man goes for a walk to Xavier Park and rests at Sakai Lighthouse. He find a girl in a raddled sailor uniform laying on the ground who, in a drunken stupor, begins to tell the man her sea worthy stories. She leaves with an cat eared affiliate, but not before the man guesses the uniformed girl’s name to be Murasa Minamitsu. In light of this confirmation, Murasa leaves an annoyed comment about Yukari, while the man begins to write down from memory the stories of Murasa as a record to compare with naval history. This intro is the framing this book uses to contain two different subjects in the same book: Naval history and Touhou artwork. Of the former, Captain Murasa’s Stories is a naval history book that features the ships of Great Britain, Germany, and Japan, all accompanied by photos and artworks. For my personal feelings, the writing intrigued me as much as a good history book knows to tell historical facts as part of a narrative. Reading the reason behind the ships’ creation, seeing their action out on the war operations, and having geopolitics context for their movements made feel a rich connection to essentially the life stories of ships. This is all aided with U-Joe’s rich artstyle, where the sea endlessly waves, the sky setting great color balance, and the ships acting as the focal piece. These artworks serve to highlight the ships for these present times. Of the latter, Captain Murasa’s Stories is a Touhou artbook that carry heavy Western inspiration in both style and subject. As mentioned before, U-Joe is rich in his artstyle as the environments are wonderfully lush of nature’s eccentrics, while Touhou characters outfitted in far more fashionable style. His subjects can vary where one can see Aya flying over the stormy sea, while another artwork depicts Alice serving tea to a blond child sitting in a well-lit living room. U-Joe also wonderfully mixes Western subjects with Touhou in both environment and clothing, such that artworks still look like a dream more in line of the a past European era not fettered by the fright of recent invasions. To think that a Touhou fanwork would make me interested in reading the life of British air carrier for the past hour is indicative of how Touhou can connect vastly different subjects together. Perhaps the true subject of Touhou is something less material, liken to a dream or spirit. Perhaps the art of U-Joe was how the book created an unimaginable marriage between the sea and Touhou. =========================== Before leaving this entry out to dry, I like to mention a quote this book uses under ЁКАИ И ФЕИ (YOUKAI AND FAIRIES): The name Cendrillon caught my eye, for that doujinshi is not a typical Touhou doujinshi. While its author, FelisOvum, is certainly inspired to add Western subjects in the same way U-Joe does in his art, the narrative of the doujinshi stands out for trying to tell a theme that extends beyond its roots of a Touhou doujinshi. I recommend checking out the doujinshi, if not but to see the sort of artwork that could be created back in 2008.

The origins of Gensokyo Within Gensokyo, there are several groups of beings who can be roughly categorized into eight ‘species’ or ‘races’. Each with their own distinct subgroups. In order of commonality, these are Ghosts, Youkai, Fairies, Humans, Hermits, Demons, Kami and Dolls. Once, all these races lived on Earth. However these groups found themselves in conflict regularly. Over the course of thousands of years, humans grew in number and many of the more aggressive Fairies, Demons and Youkai were defeated. The apex of this conflict began at various times in the world, with Humanity overpowering the Youkai of Japan soon after their borders opened to the West in 1853. Though as dangerous as any rifle or bomb was the rise of secularism. Faith in these beings diminished, weakening what Youkai remained. To preserve what of them remained, the strongest remaining Youkai isolated the realm of Gensokyo from the Outside World in 1885. The realm has existed in almost complete isolation since then, with the barrier sustained by faith in the Hakurei God, as well as the strongest of the Youkai Sages. These sages are known to include Yakumo Yukari, Ibaraki Kasen and Matara Okina, though there are assumed to be others. The dragons of Gensokyo are known to have vanished at the same time, suggesting the realm was isolated in part due to their aid. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= “Hey ya’ll, its yer girl Joon here to rob you dumb Kami again. Since you’re all out of money, I’ll take...hmm, your kimono. Yes, you in the red. It looks expensive. Heads, erm, lining they go out the kitchen window. Back, they follow the ‘hidden path’. HAI-YAAH! … … Well this didn’t work out how I planned. But close enough to tails. See you idiots, I’m going to sell this to save up for my gambling fund this weekend.” =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The roars of the monster billowed down the halls. The beast they had just eluded racing through the halls. Oscar for his part turned to the kitchen windows. Quickly lunging and throwing one open. The old wood felt rotted under his finger tip, and the first wooden bar fell away. Leaving a space much too small for he, but enough for his three friends. Somehow, he managed to hide his panic with a daring smile back at the three. “We have no time to lose. We have to get out of here—through the window, quickly.” “But Osu, you can’t fit through there!” “I couldn’t scare a Youkai away either.” An impatient wave of his hand followed. The billowing from the hall soon showing there was little time to lose. Agappa was first, delicately climbing over the detritus left by the home’s owner. Before Wriggle rolled her eyes and flew over to the Mikari-Baba. Hefting her up and through the window. A dull but harmless thud coming from outside. Wriggle followed a moment later. Then, with a last glance back at him, Cirno flew out the window too. From where she hovered, watching Agappa rubbing her head and Cirno watching the window, Wriggle felt...weird. She knew she would want to see him come spilling out that window. Hopeless as Oscar was, Cirno was right. He had been a good friend to them in the little time they knew him. But...at the same time… He wanted to take Cirno from her friends. The thought had an instinctive revulsion to it. The way a human felt when he saw a cockroach, she supposed. It was disgusting, wrong even. But then...it made sense. Hadn’t Rumia been talking to him before she vanished? Hadn’t he somehow found them after Cirno spent all night crying over him and Rumia? Hadn’t he decided to go alone with her, Cirno, and the creepy friend they HAPPENED to meet on the road together? Something didn’t smell right… She could head something in her brain like padded feet through the long grass behind her. The sound was so pronounced she almost failed to hear the soft words of gnats and centipedes. Their words made her smile faintly to herself. Before she peered over the window. “Osu, you can’t get through, can you?” The man was already halfway to the door, though her words stopped him. A soft smile crossed Wriggle’s lips as she continued. “I heard from some of the insects here. There’s a hidden tunnel here. The Fortune Teller built it as a way to escape if his home was attacked. You can find it in the cellar. He kept his preserved foods, sake and reagents there.” Her news done, Wriggle turned to her friend. Half coaxing, half shoving Cirno from the scene. All as Agappa stared after her mutely. Back inside, Oscar took stock of his situation. The house was inhabited by a monster, one which seemed to want him dead. But it could be fooled, and fairly easily. He just had to evade it, and find his way to the cellar. He was even pretty sure he knew where it was. He just had to get to it before the monster outside did… The question was, how? =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = If he's scared by ghosts, then we just have to make things extra creepy. All I need is a few of these pieces of rooting meat, some cloth and a bowl... = Maybe by getting the girls outside to make noise on the other side of the house, it'll distract him long enough for Oscar to get to safety? = The monster had six eyes, and two of them went out when I fooled him. I wonder if there's some kind of significance to it? If I confront it directly and fool it twice more, maybe it will stop? = Nah man. Straight up Naruto run your way to the cellar. Dude will have no time to catch you.