AlexandruUnu

No. I'm not one for joining many servers, so I didn't join any Touhou-related server. The only time I ever saw other Romanian Touhou fans was in the comment section of The Doll Maker of București. As for Romanians on the internet being unhinged, I haven't seen that many unhinged Romanians, a good chunk of them being actually chill people.

Personally, I never had to deal with people calling me a bad fan, mainly because I didn't interact with other fans up until I found this forum. Well, there was this one guy on a Discord server I am in, but his messages and memes were either very political, suggestive, or sometimes straight up offensive, but that isn't what this thread is about. First question first, "Am I a bad fan?". I don't think you are a bad fan at all. You know what the fandom gatekeepers are. A bunch of people that judge people based on how and why they enjoy the series. For them, this is how it goes: "Oh, you didn't clear all the games on lunatic with a score bigger than 1 billion? Shame on you.", "You are telling me that you actually like a character from Touhou 6, 7 or 8? Go fuck yourself." (God forbid you tell them that you like a character from 6), "You play Lost Word? We don't want you here.", and so on. They think that they are holy knights sent by ZUN to cleanse the fandom from "fake" Touhou fans. I sometimes wonder what is the thought process behind their actions. There is no right way to enjoy Touhou. You can enjoy the shmup games, the fighter games, the print works, the CDs, the game's OSTs, and the enormous amount of fanwork. You can also enjoy whatever character, game or song you like, no matter if others think it's "overrated" or something. For the second question, "What makes a Touhou fan?" I'm pretty sure there is a more elaborate answer that I am not smart enough to give out. But by definition, a fan of something is someone that admires said something, so in other words, merely enjoying something part of the Touhou franchise, be it either canon or fanon is enough to qualify as a fan. I don't think I gave that good or complete of an answer to this question. Like you said, Touhou has something for everyone. You like cute girls? There is plenty of them. Fancy something dark in your life, we also have that. Enjoy mythology? Touhou is riddled with it. Are you more of a fan of fighters than shmups? Well, you're in luck. And those are just some examples of what the series has to offer.

The thing that frustrates me most about this whole situation is that the main reason why Meiling gets treated like this both in canon and fanon is because of her being Chinese. I know that China is a really bad place nowadays, but still. She got treated like utter shit all the way since the early 2000's, thanks to how much the Japanese were prejudiced against the Chinese at the time. Also, think about it. During EoSD's development, ZUN could have made Meiling an actual dragon-humanoid (like he did with Yachie), making the "Hong Meiling is actually a dragon" fan theory true (Well, since dragons are considered the highest class of creatures in Gensokyo, that would make Meiling ridiculously OP), but of course, that didn't happen, and now we have to accept the current reality.

Yeah, I think you are right. Honestly, reading through ZUN's description on how he created Meiling (mostly from SCoOW), It's safe to assume that he barely even thought about her. He just went "Well, since a dragon is fitting for stage 3, let me just put in some random chinese girl I made up and slap the kanji for "dragon" on her hat and call it a day". There is also the fact that literally every single other character in that game has some cool sounding title like "Ice Fairy of the Lake" for Cirno, and "The Girl of Knowledge and Shade" for Patchy, then there is Meiling with motherfucking "Chinese Girl". The weirdest part is that in Touhou 7.5 she got the title of "Colourful Rainbow Gatekeeper" which sounds so much cooler... and then it got reverted to "Chinese Girl" in 12.3 for some unknown reason. And thanks to the fandom we know and have extremely mixed opinions about, she gets turned more and more into a Chinese stereotype (ZUN also making her fanon canon does not help at all) This whole thing is a lost cause.

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...

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.

For some game series I really enjoy: The Soulsborne series has already been mentioned in here and I am gonna mention it again. Nothing beats going through the areas of a ruined kingdom while being always alert for whatever freaky creature wants to attack you. Until now I have finished Dark Souls 1 and 3 and I still have to finish DS2. I wish I could also play Bloodborne, but I can't since I don't own a PS4/PS5. Psychonauts is another personal favourite 3D platformer series of mine. You play as Razputin Aquato, a 10 year old psychic boy that enters the minds of people, which range from mentally healthy to suffering from mental disorders. It's very creative in terms of mental worlds, character design and more. And it's also one of those games that I really want to read through all the possible dialogue because of how fun it is. This game series also got me into liking psychology. There is also De Blob. This is an obscure 3D platformer series, released during the Wii days (also ported to modern day consoles and PC in 2017). The premise of the games is that Chroma City (De Blob 1) and Prisma City (De Blob 2) got invaded by an intergalactic empire named "INKT", ruled by Comrade Black, which took away all the colour and life of the cities, turning them into black and white hellscapes, while also enslaving their entire populations (with the exception of some rebels), and pretty much installing a very oppresive dictatorship, and it's up to Blob and a certain group of rebels to bring back freedom. It's very satisfying to turn a soulless area filled to the brim with ink and despair into a lively place bustling with colour. Oh, and the funky soundtrack is just amazing. The best part is that it constantly changes in the backround, depending on how much you paint and on what colour you are painting with. Hmm, typing this out, I just realised how much I love 3D platformers.