The Residents of Our Gensokyo

This is Gensokyo, OUR Gensokyo.

If you read a bit on this blog’s About page, you’ll get this line around the author’s introduction:

The author was introduced into the Dasaku roster as the resident Touhoufag, one of the “abundantly rare” species of the blogging world.

About Page of Rainbowsphere

The term “abundantly rare” on the sentence isn’t a contradictory phrase. It’s a fact. In the ridiculously vast community of Touhou, it’s hard to find people who love Touhou for the sake of everything in it, be it fan stuff, canon, or anything in between. You’ll see people who love Touhou for the sake of the fan-made MVs. You’ll see people who like the doujin games more than they like the original Touhou ones. Heck, you’ll even see people collecting Touhou doujin paperback without the slightest clue of who the characters in the doujin are! But this I have to ask: Are they really fans of Touhou? Surely they realize that they’re only patronizing one part of the franchise, which disowns them of their titles as fans for that matter.

And so I, while flying alongside Reimu, decided to scour the blogosphere in search of true residents of this vast space that is our Gensokyo.

Reimu Hakurei – Rainbowsphere

Of course, we start at our home base: The rickety, disheveled shrine that is home to the impoverished shrine maiden and the impoverished otaku. Rainbowsphere wasn’t intentionally a brainchild of Touhou, but during the peak popularity of Touhou’s seventh game (Imperishable Night), it happened. Slowly but surely, Reimu started converting the author, and later on, the blog, into something like her.

Why pick Reimu is my personal Touhou character, you ask? Surely you’ll think of the preference as something along the lines of “Of course, since she’s one of Touhou’s enigmatic protagonists!” or something like it. Wrong. I chose Reimu because I see a lot of similarities when I dared to compare myself with her. We’re both poor, lazy, annoying, arrogant, ignored, and possibly an enemy to anyone and everyone because of the aforementioned qualities. Even the places they live on (not in the literal sense for the author) are similar to the fact that they are old, dusty, and ignored by the majority of the populace. But hey, we’re also both stars of our show and life! I guess that’s an advantage of being a “player character”: We get to control our own destinies while dodging the bullet hell that is fate. Too bad I can’t fly, though.

Alice Margatroid – Lyrical☆Spark!

And so we move on to the next resident, who lives in the Magic Forest of Lyrical☆Spark!: Honya. Honya manages the site very well, and I do know that she’s heavily involved in Touhou, albeit I only knew most of it through backlog reading. She’s very enthusiastic with Touhou merchandise (I love those Fumoffu plushies, too), and she follows the games that she likes (a trait that I also see in myself). Plus, I love how she draws (even though I’m not an avid fan of Yuri on the Chalkboard).

Honya has Alice Margatroid as her personal Touhou character. Most of her early Yuri on the Chalkboard creations are pairings of Alice and another Gensokyo resident, Marisa Kirisame. She even uses a chibi version of Alice as her personal icon and avatar. However, aside from taking a liking on the Magic Team pairing and the various shippings it spawned, I don’t see any other preferences Honya has on Alice. I intend to know more about this when I get some time to talk to the person in question. Or maybe I can just use the profile page and comment a question in there.

Hina Kagiyama – Loli Salad

Now we move further into youkai territory, where the Mountain of Loli Salad, home to Fang-tan, resides. Fang-tan is someone I knew back on my early blogging days after being taken in by Dasaku. She loves Touhou, doujin paperback, doujin soundtrack, games, and all. Then, due to some “Violations of Terms of Service”, she went POOF! and was never to be found. Mysteriously, she came back without me noticing (shame on me), and she’s now reviewing Touhou doujin soundtracks in full force. She does occasionally mention Touhou artists, doujin paperback, games, and other interesting stuff, so don’t think she’ll all soundtrack reviews.

Fang-tan has Hina Kagiyama as her personal Touhou character. It’s only recently that I found out this preference, since I met her before Mountain of Faith was released, and she wasn’t using a prominent Touhou character to stand out. Eventually, as I delved further into her profile after her comeback, I see her using Hina the most. As for similarities, permanent character attachment, and shippings, I’m going to keep my mouth closed and fingers crossed on that one.

Cirno – Cirno is a Genius

Suddenly, we find ourselves in some misty lake just in front of the Scarlet Devil’s Mansion. There, you can find an ice fairy named Cirno is a Genius, wandering and in search of frogs to Perfect Freeze in Easy Mode. Now, this site is absolutely off my mark, and I just stumbled upon it after fiddling with Walfas‘ link list. The About page is almost blank, most of the posts are Touhou-related (PC-98 Touhou diskettes, that’s a swell find indeed), and I absolutely have no clue who the hell uses “Cirno is a Genius” as a name, but the author sure is doing a great job on his Touhou endeavor.  I do wonder why he/she/it stopped updating for a while…

As for the author’s personal character, it’s Cirno inside-out. We all know how Cirno is ridiculously received, and the author is willing to prove us wrong in that account. One thing is for sure about Cirno and Cirno is a Genius: They may be geniuses, they may be something else, but they’re definitely not going to settle as idiots.

This may be all for now, but the search isn’t over. More like it never will be. I expect more aspiring residents in the near future, and I  shall welcome them with anticipation that is equal to their aspiration and fandom. And oh, how excited am I for the next incident to happen!

My Gensokyo ain’t big enough yet. But OUR Gensokyo? It’s as big as anyone can imagine. You can bet your hitbox on that.