Hi,
I know this forum hasn't been active for almost a month, but I found it so interesting that I wanted to chime in.
First, I wanted to say that I'm a newcomer in the most literal sense. I've known about Touhou for a while, with Bad Apple being my first introduction, along with fumo memes and such. I downloaded Touhou 6 for the first time about a year ago, but I recently redownloaded it because I'm really interested in learning the lore and characters, especially to understand the famous doujins like Osana Reimu. I'm emphasizing that I'm a total newcomer, someone who had zero knowledge of this series for the longest time, and I want to share my perspective.
There are a lot of points brought up here that are very interesting and can explain the recent situation regarding Touhou. As someone with no knowledge of most of them—like ZUN's work, his recent games, the doujinshi scene, etc.—I want to focus more on the community as a whole and what I think of it.
One of the problems Vanyk mentions, which I found interesting, is the decentralization of the Touhou community. As someone still looking from the outside, I can say that even with my little knowledge of the whole history of this community, it's clear Touhou doesn't have a centralized way for fans to interact with each other. This makes it difficult for people like me who don't know where to start. One of the best ways is to ask the fans themselves, but with such dispersed fans, it's really difficult to know where to ask about Touhou. This might be explained by how Touhou has always been like this since the inception of the game and the online days, or how Touhou is such an old series and inevitably, old series with rare releases start dwindling in community size. But still, as someone from the outside, I can say that it's really difficult to know where to ask about Touhou and get useful responses.
This leads to my biggest difficulty with Touhou: where to ask about Touhou itself. My first instinct (and I think most people's) is either Google or YouTube. Google gives almost no useful results and always recommends Reddit (which I'll mention shortly) or YouTube. YouTube helped me get into it, particularly with the help of AspreyFM's video "What is Touhou? A Brief Explanation" and another YouTuber, GensouChronicle, who made a similar video. These videos are perfect for someone like me to get into Touhou, as they explain in great detail what games are available, which ones they recommend playing, and the history of the community and memes, which is always fun to watch. I don't know if there are others or if these are even considered good in the community, but they helped me get to know more about Touhou. If there are others, let me know, as it will help me get into the games more.
However, regarding these two, there aren't many people I know who talk about Touhou, and as Vanyk mentioned, they barely interact with each other or even with the fandom. This is fine if they do it just as a passion, but to get people more invested in Touhou, they should collaborate more. They can help each other grow, introduce other content creators, and spread and amplify the reach of Touhou. Regarding Reddit, it seems mostly to post art and talk about random stuff, which doesn't appeal much to newcomers like me who have no idea what they're talking about most of the time.
Another important point is where to find other places to get to know the fandom. As I said, for most of us, it's either Google or YouTube, and even with YouTube, things are not organized or big enough to reach a wider audience. Then there's this website, which I thankfully found. I found it by pure luck while looking for a place to play the games, as Touhou 6 to 9 aren't on Steam, and I wanted to start with the first. This website is a godsend, as it has everything I wanted, but it's not well-known, requiring persistence and luck to find. I know this website is connected to piracy, which complicates things, and some people don't like piracy and don't inform about places like this. However, as someone who wants to get into the game and the community, it's really useful. Vanyk mentioned other piracy circles, which if you know about, please share. It's a shame that it's even more divided in this semi-circle of Touhou, as too many small circles make getting into Touhou more difficult. There should be a way to redirect people here safely and prominently, so it's the first place people are recommended to talk about the fandom or just play the games.
In conclusion, I see the community as too shut down. I understand very well that when you are in a community, you want it to be active and prosperous, but you also fear attracting annoying people who might ruin the community and complicate things. This leads to gatekeeping newcomers out of fear, which I understand, but it also means newcomers with good intentions have no means to get into the community. Even with this website and those YouTube videos I mentioned, which are great and informative, I still feel it's very little and not connected. All these things have their own communities instead of one united. I know centralizing everything is no easy task and might not be possible, but there should be a way to connect content creators, forums/piracy websites, other communities like Reddit or Discord servers, to have more of a united connection. This would allow tiny communities within each other to interact correctly and nicely with each other, or else newcomers will never get a chance to get into Touhou properly.
I'm not here to give answers on how to resolve the community, as I'm just new, but I wanted to share my perspective as a newcomer. There are most likely people out there in the same boat as me but with no means or reason to ask or talk about it. I'm here because I had nothing new to do and saw the controversy with the DMCA affecting the official games, so I wanted to dive into the whole thing to see what's up. I hope you guys can see this, so at least you have a new perspective from someone outside the community and maybe find a way to resolve all of this. This was still a great thread, and I'm glad I came across it. Good work, guys and hope things get better.
