Trivia / Diamond in the Rough (Touhou)

• Creator Backlash: Spaztique himself has admitted that while DitR was supposed to take potshots at self-insert fics, it's caused a lot of people to miss the point (see GenreKiller above), and wished to potentially right the flaws it had, and make the message more clear. However, he's moved on to create Wrath of the Amanojaku, which is much more lighter than Diamond in the Rough. He more or less considers it a comedy now, according to comments on Episode 20b.
• Creator Breakdown: Inverted during the Troubled Production of Episode 8, where Spaztique actually spent most of his offtime learning to manage his procrastination and work habits. As a result of his studies, he not only got Episode 8 done, but he's been actively managing his work ethic more... at least until Episode 10.
  • Played straight in early 2013 due to horrible sleep schedule problems, resulting in MASSIVE delays. In June 2013, he finally got it fixed, resulting in morning/evening production streams.
• Development Hell: While Spaztique regularly streams production and will even broadcast the full movie (explaining the parts that are unpolished or incomplete), critics who avoid the streams and the Youtube series believe Spaztique has had no progress in the movie's one year of production, citing it will never be released in full. As of July 11, 2014, the full movie is finished.
• Follow the Leader: The following trends seem to have started thanks to Diamond In The Rough:
  • It has codified the "Outsider Tragedy Fic," resulting in such fics as Lesson of Life, Miss Y, The Crossroad, and even the Outsider Fic Reconstruction Mind The Gap.
  • Yukari and other residents reccomending reading the Universe Compendium.
  • Yukari's "local Gensokyo beef," which is arguably a Reconstruction of Touhou canon.
  • Remilia drinking blood from outsiders as payment for the services of the Scarlet Devil Mansion.
  • Visual works inspired by Diamond In The Rough use the dark, cluttered design for Marisa's house, which is actually based on ZUN's own drawings of Marisa's house.
  • Nitori showing her cocky and Insufferable Genius side in wild contrast to her fanon personality.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: Spaztique regularly asks for ideas and assistance over his Ustream and in voice chat: Some number of lines and suggestions from the Ustream chat are incorporated into the movie while others inspire other ideas.
• Outdated by Canon: Hit by this hard. Touhou Shinpiroku ~ Urban Legend in Limbo and Touhou Suzunaan ~ Forbidden Scrollery not only expand on the treatment of humans in Gensokyo and the youkai-managed balance of power, but also specifically address what would happen if an over-powered human broke into Gensokyo and treated it as a plaything and openly portray Yukari as (selectively) actively helping humans simply because she feels like it. (The former and Touhou Kanjuden ~ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom also demonstrated Yukari actively ignoring issues that potentially threatened Gensokyo's destruction, implied to be because she both had faith in the heroines to fix things and would be able to settle things if need be.) Further games would lend themselves to more complex readings of characters, but nowhere in the deeply Darker and Edgier direction DiTR took itself.
• Production Posse: The streams are often accompanied by chat regulars who submit ideas and lines for DitR, especially if Spaz gets stuck or needs inspiration. Regulars include the original ColonelDiamondback, the real LikeThisRLYMatters, ChibiChen, DeityDiz, HydroGems, LeonTekashi, TheGuyNamedSky, NuclearFalcon, MiniWitch3, ExPorygon, Sturmgeschutts, NeoNate, and others.
• Promoted Fanboy: The original ColonelDiamondback after seeing the original cut.
  • Stream regulars Ethan Rivers and Mind The Gap writer ChibiChen helped co-write some scenes for Episode 14.
  • For Episode 17, stream regular and Komachi fan DeityDiz93 got to co-write the scene between Brolli and Komachi. He also helped make the sign in Makai for Episode 14.
• Reality Subtext: The whole story is a giant allegory for fanfic writers; numerous comments by characters about Brolli's journey also reflect the pitfalls of novice writers in general.
• Schedule Slip: Originally to be released in June 2012, then the final release date got longer and longer until Spaztique decided to just fill in people on the missing parts during the live streamings.
  • A pretty bad one for Episode 8, Spaztique got stuck on one particularly tricky/pivotal scene between Brolli and Sakuya for three weeks^note The scene's job is to simultaneously establish why Sakuya is no longer an incident resolver in the story, the contrast between Brolli and Sakuya, and become Brolli's last saving grace before he becomes the tragic villain seen in the remainder of the story, all at once. Each time Spaztique tried to do the scene, it ended up increasing the already-long runtime by ten minutes. The final version clocked in at three minutes, but the rest of the episode didn't get done until January 13 thanks to Spaztique's procrastination.
  • An even worse one for Episode 11, getting delayed several months due to horrible sleep issues. Resolved in June of 2013 with Spaztique firing on all cylinders again.
  • Episode 13 took longer than normal due to an insanely detailed fight scene. Viewers can vouch for its Visual Effects of Awesome.
  • Like Episode 13, Episode 18 is taking longer than usual for trying to top every large-scale battle scene that came before. To give you an idea how elaborate the battle scenes of Episode 18 are (spoiler warning), Spaztique recorded one of his production streams.
  • Episode 19 and 20 needed extensive rewriting to keep Yukari and Tenshi's motivations checked and improve the ending.
• Troubled Production: The story behind DitR's rough production and long delay times are legendary among the Walfas community. Detailed in the full "Making Of" guide, but for a taste of what happened...
  • The addition of the prologue tripled the production time, and if things couldn't get any worse, storms knocked out Spaztique's power for a week early in production. When his power came back on, he lost his momentum.
  • The delays came back for Episode 8: Spaztique got stuck on a particularly complex scene, and when he finally finished it, his bed began falling apart while being overwhelmed with school work. Spaztique eventually finished Episode 8 by January 13 after devoting a week to reading about procrastination.
  • Then, in early 2013, Spaztique's sleep schedule fell apart in addition to problems within the Walfas community, causing even more delays. In June 2013, he recovered and is regularly streaming production, but the infighting continued to the very end of production.
• What Could Have Been: The original Diamond In The Rough was a little less adventurous...
  • The original simply starts at the incident and assumes you've already seen Colonel Diamondback's videos. The only exposition we get is with Spaztique himself. The original opening is still archived.
  • In the original version of the current climax, Reimu and her team rush down the mountain after defeating Sanae to save Brolli and get into a battle with Marisa, Nitori, and the survivors of the Kappa Valley. Also, Brolli doesn't develop as a character in his fight against Tenshi: he relies on his weapons and is unceremoniously murdered. There was also a second part to the climax: Brolli, now a ghost, makes a mad dash to the Netherworld in hopes of changing his appearance yet again since he's gotten costume/haircut changes from Youmu in the past. Youmu refuses, the Ministry destroys his ghost, and the credits roll. To cut down on runtime, there was another ending: Brolli is tried by the Ministry and sentenced to Hell. Just as he's on his way down, he asks, "Who am I?," hits the lava, and the screen cuts to black. After Spaztique met Colonel Diamondback and saw his reaction, the ending got a major revision: Brolli would now go out like a hero and get another chance.
  • The original Epilogue put a much greater emphasis on the idea that Brolli's existence had no effect on Gensokyo, showing the residents months after his death returning to life like normal.
  • In Episode 2, Brolli gets a gun from the other moon rabbits and battles his way to the House of Eternity with Reisen, fighting Rumia on the way.
  • In Episode 9, Lepus wasn't going to hypnotize Brolli since he was growing uncomfortable depending on it: instead, Marisa decides to bring him back to her place and "desensitize" him, resulting in an uncomfortably realistic scene between Marisa and Brolli. The scene was cut for both runtime and the ridiculously high levels of Squick.
  • In Episode 12, there was going to be a rather uncomfortable sex scene between Brolli and Nitori, but instead, it was replaced with the heartwarming moment it has now. More importantly, this new scene makes the climax/ending that much more heartwrenching.
  • In Episode 13, Brolli was to initiate the attack on the Scarlet Devil Mansion, but it has since changed in writing the scene to keep pacing. While writing, Spaztique asked the real ColonelDiamondback what'd he do. He said, "The obvious choice is for them to just lay down their weapons and walk away," which is a line that gets into the movie. Then, Spaztique asked, "So, do you think it'd be a good idea to relive them of command and put Hydrus in charge?" ColonelDiamondback said, "Yes," and the rest is Wham Line history.
  • It was originally planned that Brolli would sleep with Marisa, Nitori, Reisen, Kaguya, Tewi, Eirin, and Sanae, but there was little time to put all of these scenes, it made Brolli cross too far past the Moral Event Horizon, and didn't contribute much to the plot at large other than lowering Brolli's likability.
  • In the final battle with Tenshi of the original, it's involuntary: Momiji fires her final shot and it launches Brolli and Tenshi into space. Brolli pleads for Yukari to gap him out, but she refuses and is going to use Jack Diehard as his next replacement. In the published version, Brolli pleads for help sooner, and Yukari says he can win without her help, revealing that he's there to destroy the balance and he has fulfilled his job. When the battle reaches its end, Brolli willingly stays to let Tenshi's final card take him up, despite Aya's insistence for him to run away.
  • For those curious about the ending, the original ending of the preview cut is a straight Downer Ending: the good guys lose and are punished, the bad guys win and are punished, and there's only some hope for Brolli when he reincarnates thanks to his Heel Realization. The final cut is an Earn Your Bittersweet Ending: the events Brolli unleashed on Gensokyo were the kick-in-the-pants it needed for Gensokyo to finally stand up for itself, and it will soon recover. Although Brolli won't get to see it since he'll be reincarnated, his final sacrifice saves Gensokyo in the long run.
• Word of God: In addition to responding to several of his comments and on his production streams, Spaztique has made a companion guide, The Definitive Guide To Diamond In The Rough, going over everything in the series, from deleted scenes to writing choices to the actual Arturo story.

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