On a Lighter Note

Far FAR lighter note this time, a bit of a rant.

      So, given that chances are if you're reading this, you are not familiar with Touhou Project, I'm going to start with a quick summary here, before I get into what I'm ranting on.

      The Touhou Project is a series of games, ultimately made by one man working alone, who goes by the name of ZUN. He began making the games in the late 90s, because, to paraphrase (and translate, as he's Japanese) a quote of his, the games that were available just weren't the games he wanted to play.
     So he made his own. and then a sequel. And another sequel. Flash forward to 2011, ZUN is working on the 13th main series game, and there are no less than 6 side games. The series has been incredibly successful, and it's pretty easy to see why.

     If you liked playing arcade games during the 90s, where each game had to separately mastered, with its own tweaks, improvements, and features, then you would definitely like the games, as they take after those in terms of gameplay.

     They are an incredible challenge, and it is never the game's fault should you lose. There are no cheap tricks, it's just difficult. Secondly, the games are beautiful. Well, for the most part they are. QUALITY art abounds in the portraits, but ZUN's character design skills show through from the very beginning, and it's worth just watching the backgrounds during the game, even in the older games, from when they were on PC-98. The storylines are well constructed, and the characters get some hilarious dialog in. Finally, listen to the music. The standard music for the games is amazingly good, and should you have something against synthesizers, listen to the remixes. Don't try to listen to them all. Seriously. There's too many. If you need more information, go here.

    And that brings me around to what I want to rant talk about. You see, while Touhou has an amazing fandom, that same fandom forgets the games that they're making fan-material for.

     Take Reimu, the main character. In the games, she's a fairly level-headed person, who relies on her intuition to help resolve incidents that occur. She does try to drum up business for the shrine, but considering that's her only method of survival, it's easy to let that slide.

     In Fanon? She's a greedy bitch who'll destroy anything between her and money, and there is no such thing as too much force.

     How about Marisa, who's been around almost as long as Reimu, and has dialog in every windows game? In canon, she's a magician who, after having fought Reimu when her then-teacher Mima was causing an incident decided to assist in resolving anything that occurred later. Unfortunately, being a magician, most humans actively stay away from her, so it's hard for her to actually earn anything to survive on. Her wit keeps her interesting, though, as she will note the insanity and ridiculousness of the situations she gets into before anyone else does. "Alright, go look up how to beat her while I beat her, will you?"

     Fanon has her as thief who will steal anything and everything, including many other character's hearts. Seriously, she gets paired up with almost every character in the series! It's a little ridiculous at this point.

     It's true of the lesser characters, too. See Yuuka, who, in canon is a born blood knight. She shows up just to get into a fight with Reimu, and outright refuses to fight a good many characters in the series because they wouldn't give a good fight.

     Fanon has her a sadist, with nothing else for personality. It just doesn't work, and leaves her bland.

     Speaking of blood knights, canon Touhou has another one in Tenshi Hinanai. She starts off an incident that nearly destroys the world because she was bored. Let me repeat that for you. SHE NEARLY CAUSES THE GODSDAMNED APOCALYPSE BECAUSE SHE WAS BORED. She just wants a fight to make eternity less boring for her.

     Fanon, naturally, sees this and says, "SADIST!"... Note that this is the character who ends the game's plotlines by solidly defeating every other character in the game, one after another. Not exactly based on the games.

     Cirno's a more subtle example, what with having gone from kinda stupid (canon) to Ralph Wiggum (Fanon)

     I don't mind alternate character interpretation, but there are times when it becomes painfully obvious that they haven't even played one of the games that they consider themselves fans of. If I can do it without any income there isn't any excuse.