Needs Help: Characters.Touhou

Ok, then I am pretty much done. Just gotta clean up PCB and IN a bit and then it will have to be enough for today. Now that the easy part is taken care of I have to now search through canon to see if I can find official art of various side characters. But that will have to wait till tomorrow.

Before anything else continues with discussions and stuff, I just wanna thank you very much, Matt, for doing the work!

"Mystia is a former German nun“ -Clarste //// "[...]collectively, we have the power to destroy the Aki sandwich" -Clarste

Good work.

edited 26th Nov '15 10:07:10 AM by AnotherDuck

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Np. It was I who started this after all, so it only makes sense that I finish it as well.

ZUN-art is one thing, but is there any reason all the characters with alternate appearances were removed? No human Mamizou, no young Mokou... It's going to be especially confusing if Yuuka and Alice have only one picture.

As I said before, I would prefer showing the different eras of the two latter, along with Reimu and Marisa, due to the split between them. I'm not sure a disguise or a flashback picture are on the same level, though. We don't need to have every change characters go through.

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I agree with not showing all of the changes the characters have gone through if solely for the fact that a lot of the characters do have minor changes to their designs on a game by game basis. A good example would be comparing Aya's art in PoFV to the one used in MF.

edited 26th Nov '15 4:11:15 PM by MachThreeSlug

I do lots of stuff. The real question is am I any good at that stuff.

I can see no reason, and I agree 100% about those two! I would also add Hakutaku Keine to that list (ZUN-Art, of course).

Does anyone have any objection to adding pics for those three, before we move on to the harder questions?

I absolutely support this, too! (Of course, then we have to decide which pics to use, which is basically the PC-98 discussion, which is gonna have to happen eventually anyway )

Well, yes, we obviously don't need every character change. We're only talking about those three, plus the four above. I'd call that very reasonable, no? That shouldn't be a problem. (Compared to the completely crazy idea I dreamed of last night, and which will never get greenlit here: having the Fighting Game Art pics for all applicable chars alongside their ZUN-Art-pics, to settle that issue. That would be excessive ^^)

Keine's two forms have always had two pics. Human Mamizou is also really important, I'd say, she's basically her own character in FS, also it just shows quickly and effectively that she's a shapeshifter, an infiltrator. Young Mokou is kinda gratuitous, I'll grant you... but the positive reception she got in the Touhou Thread when she was drawn and revealed and then put on the char page convinces me that she's worth it. I'd say we can live with that.

"Mystia is a former German nun“ -Clarste //// "[...]collectively, we have the power to destroy the Aki sandwich" -Clarste

Just to be clear, what I have done now is just the first round so to speak. What we are seeing now is not the final version. We will be able to do fine tuning now that the main stuff is done.

One thing I might suggest is that alternate's could be hidden under [[note]].

However I still don't know how to approach PC-98.

I don't personally have an objection to that, if there are enough tropes so the images don't drop into the next character. I can live with having them. The general preference of the site is to limit it to one if possible, though.

A note hiding a secondary image is acceptable.

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I'd also like to have Yukari's IaMP portait, since both of her outfits (purple dress and Taoist dress) are pretty iconic, and whenever she shows up in different clothes it's usually a variant of one or the other.

Depending on the medium, it's reasonably common to have multiple character sheets for the same character if they appear in multiple installments, particularly if there's a Time Skip or Retool in between. Whatever about continuity, the PC-98 versions of Reimu, Marisa, Yuuka and Alice are significantly different from the Windows ones and embody different tropes (to the point where ZUN had to clarify that EoSD Reimu wasn't a descendant of the PC-98 one or something).

Basically, put a character sheet in the PC-98 page with a picture of "Reimu the whimsical purple-haired girl who rides a turtle and lives in Eastern Country", and another in the Main Characters page with a picture of "Reimu the grouchy dark-haired young woman who flies on her own and lives in Gensokyo", with links in the description of each that point to the other.

...or just include ZUN-art of PC-98 Reimu below the current pic. However, I really don't think there should be a picture of Windows Alice listed first and foremost in "debuted in Mystic Square".

edited 27th Nov '15 9:06:34 AM by Prime32

Very excellent, just what I hoped for.

Awesome!

Ah! That's what I was afraid of. But good to have an answer to that, I was wondering.

Hmmmm, not sure about that. Pure costume changes might be too hard to justify having two pics for; in the case of, for example, Keine and Mamizou, it's also a species change, so easier to justify. I mean, I personally would of course like to have as many pics as possible, but we gotta be careful that we don't overdo it right away

Wow, my first instinct is "cool idea!". Anyone else?

Agreed, I'm not a fan of that either.

"Mystia is a former German nun“ -Clarste //// "[...]collectively, we have the power to destroy the Aki sandwich" -Clarste

Regarding that I am pretty sure that there are some pages that have multiple sections for one and the same character, for example those that has multiple interpretations alongside those that undergo some for of Continuity Reboot. And I know that at least from my experience that fans tend to treat the PC-98 incarnations as almost separate characters.

As for the multiple images topic I have given it some thought and has come up with some ideas but I am unsure if they are viable. ^note In case you wonder one is more of a collection of different artists but that of course would not be practical especially for Reimu and Marisa. The other is closer to what we used to have with images showing alternate versions of them such as Mamizou's human form and Mokou's past self. But like I said, I am unsure just how viable this approach would be.

Hello, everyone. I'd like to apologize for the outburst I had regarding the main page image. I am a Contributor on Danbooru, and a group of people suggested that image that I posted be made the TV Tropes image, on the grounds that they thought it was perfect, and I agreed with them. To have that taken away from me left a very bad taste in my mouth, but I'm over it, and I'm ready to move on. The current main page image is fine. I'm here to discuss the other changes that appear to be happening.

I, like many of you, have very strong feelings about this topic. I know a lot of work has already been done to move character art away from fanart and towards 100% official art, but I'd like to weigh in on this, because it appears that the people I agree with are being out-voted, and I feel like they wouldn't be if we had more participants.

The very first post of this thread states that Touhou uses fanart for its character portraits instead of official art, and that this is a problem that needs to be corrected, because it should not be allowed to be an exception.

I vehemently disagree, for one big reason:

Touhou is the very definition of an exception. The official works are, and are acknowledged to be, a relatively small part of what makes it so great. The vast, vast majority of the Touhou fandom has become a celebration of the creativity and devotion of the rest of the fandom that grew around it. The creator is noted to sometimes take inspiration from the fandom on this very wiki. There is literally no comparison that can be made. Even Star Wars can't quite make the comparison - it has a huge, devoted, and creative fandom, but the vast majority of Star Wars fans come for the movies - the canon - while Touhou is the inverse. You can be a Touhou fan and literally never consume any of its official works - you'd be missing out, for sure, but that is a thing that happens. Often.

For that reason, to say that using fanart for character portraits is somehow disrespectful to ZUN... might actually be disrespectful to not only ZUN, but his devoted and hard-working fans. ZUN is one guy. The fact that he inspired all of ~~~~this~~~~ is a miracle. It's a fucking miracle. But he can only spread himself so thin. He makes the games, designs the characters, draws the pictures, composes the music, writes the story, and tests the games, all by himself. Somewhere along the line, someone came along and said, "Wow, this is an amazing thing you've made here. Your character designs are phenomenal, their interactions are hilarious, and I can tell you love them all. You've made me love them too. I like this so much that I am going to use my more specialized talents as an artist to make your phenomenal character designs and personalities come to life. I'm even going to fill in the gaps you left by giving the Faceless Extras a face and personality the way I think you might have, given the chance."

ZUN works hard, but the fans work hard too. That's pretty incredible.

Dairi in particular, who is the artist we used to take our pictures from for the fanart character portraits, works extremely hard for the sake of the fandom. He doesn't just draw single Alphes-style portraits for each character — each time he draws a character, he draws multiple full-body images of them in different positions, each with at least 50 different facial expressions, and each expression includes its own "after battle" version so that people who make Danmaku fangames are free to express those characters however they like, and he posts them on the net for people to use for free. He does this for every character, even the ones with no official appearances, which is why we had images for Daiyousei, Momiji, Rei'sen, Tokiko, Koakuma, and several others in the first place. He does all this and still manages to find time to draw his own fan-comics.

Tell me with a straight face that his art doesn't belong here just because it's "not official art" and is thus "disrespectful to ZUN". Even in fan-drawn art, ZUN still designed the characters, so a good chunk of his hard work is still there, it's just been interpreted by someone else. We're here talking about it because of him, and we joke about his art being odd because he's really a lot like one of us: the proto-fan who created everything, even if he wasn't perfect at everything he tried to do. He's a lot like Marisa: dare to be better, no matter the consequences.

The fact that you are now struggling to find replacements for images of the Faceless Extras should be an indication of what's wrong here. You saw fanart and saw a problem. You saw people "ignoring the rules," and "making exceptions" without realizing what the spirit of Touhou is, and forgetting the kindred, informal spirit of TV Tropes in the process. The work ZUN has done is important and necessary, but the work his fans have done to spread the fruits of his vision throughout the world is just as important. Touhou is as much a celebration of its own fandom as it is a celebration of ZUN's creations. For that reason, fanart should be welcome here with open arms, not struck down just because other series have questionable official art too.

It is also for this reason that I must object to ZUN's art being the art we use for character portraits. The fact that it's his weakest area of expertise is an argument you've no doubt heard a thousand times, so I'll explain why there's yet more to it than that.

ZUN's character designs are amazing, and his art isn't even all bad. Some of it is downright adorable, even as far back as Eo SD. Cirno's Eo SD picture is probably better than her DDC picture. ZUN is clearly capable of some good stuff even with drawn pictures, even if it is his weakness. However, it is wildly inconsistent. Even when comparing pictures from the same games, ZUN's art quality is inconsistent. That we are now discussing which ZUN images to use is telling of this. If we use images from the first game a character appears in, super-popular characters like Sakuya and Sanae are going to have downright hideous images that aren't even how they look anymore in ZUN's own canon. Almost the exact same problem happens if we use images from the latest game they appeared in! Ironically, some characters look amazing in ZUN art made in between then and now, and which is better is often up to interpretation, which means we're going to have to discuss each image on a case-by-case basis, and even if we come to a compromise, that's still likely to invite shitstorms from fans of those characters, who had perfectly fine images before, and some of whom have no images at all now. I guess I'm lucky on this front — my favorite is Marisa, and the consensus on the main characters appears to be "keep their Harukawa Moe art from U Li L, since she's become the official non-ZUN artist". I second the sentiment that if we touch those images, I'm going to eat every single one of you. That's how strongly I feel about this, and that's how strongly other fans feel about their favorites. Imagine how a Remilia fan must feel now that her art's been Eo SD'd. Dairi's images might not have been official, but they tried to respectfully mimic an official style, and were brilliantly consistent. There was no problem with them, other than the fact that ZUN didn't draw them, but I've made that argument.

I know it seems a bit late to start joining this discussion, but after ignoring the discussion for so long and coming to the Eo SD page on a whim, the ramifications of not participating at all are only now becoming clear to me. I ask that you both forgive me for the late start, and also that you do not discount my post just because work has been done to change things around already.

Who brought up the point about things being disrespectful to ZUN, and where was it used as a serious argument for whichever image?

I think using fanart to illustrate characters is about the same as placing tropes used in fanfics on pages for the official works the fanfics are based on. It's a fan interpretation that may not be true to canon, nor is it likely to be shared by the entire fandom. However small the official works may be in relation to the fandom, they're still what inspired everything else. That's what I think we should use. The inspiration for it all, not some of the results.

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I agree with AnotherDuck, it simply is the most logical thing to do. If I where to let my own feelings decide what to use if it simply was considered better than canon do then I would use art by either Baba or Banpai Akira, and especially for the latter we both know why that wouldn't work. That would be better if it had it's own Character page.

Like stated before, one possible way would be have it set up with alternate images by other official artists under notes, especially for some that underwent noticeable change. This however also raised the problem that some characters could become cluttered.

As for popular characters like Sanae and Sakuya that you mentioned, well I had an idea about that but never bothered with it, since I found it somewhat unreasonable in hindsight. Remember that Strange Creator of Outer World had art of Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya and Sanae? Well the idea went as such that those two maybe should be moved to the Main Character page and then use that art, but like I stated before, I decided against raising that point.

edited 14th Jan '16 12:32:36 AM by matteste

No, that happens all the time. Even the Fanfic page itself talks about the number of people reading and writing Ranma ½ and Harry Potter fanfics who've never read the source material (heck, there's an entire trope page on a specific type of Ranma ½ fanfic). And then there's the Recursive Fanfiction and Fan Verse tropes.

Every fandom makes the exact same arguments for why they're more creative than everyone else, bring people together, etc. Look at Future Perfect for instance, where the author goes on and on about how amazing that Star Trek is for having fans who can interpret it in so many different ways and create so many works based on it, and how no other creative work has achieved this.

ZUN actually says he goes out of his way to avoid this. It's just that, when you have a fanbase as large as Touhou, the odds are almost 100% that someone will create something similar to a future piece of canon. I recall that Wizards of the Coast had a policy that any piece of Dungeons And Dragons homebrew posted on their forums belonged to them - not because they wanted to take ideas from fans, but because there was a real risk of a fan suing them due to a coincidental similarity.

Also, some pieces of Fanon just weren't much of a stretch to begin with. Mokou's Cast from Hit Points mechanics in ULiL are sometimes called an Ascended Meme, but in IN she was extremely powerful yet described as a normal human, and she died after every attack, so I'm pretty sure that was always what ZUN intended (never mind that her personality in ULiL is nothing like how fans usually depict her).

Literally every Japanese-language Touhou Fan Vid or doujinshi has a boilerplate saying "this is disrespectful to ZUN, please bear in mind that it's not an accurate reflection of canon". ZUN himself has requested that you don't use fanworks to introduce people to Touhou, since they could give a false impression (this is the main reason that you can't sell fangames on Steam).

edited 14th Jan '16 12:31:02 PM by Prime32

Good news for those who want Daiyousei. Hirasaka Makoto has produced this, and from what I can gather it is official.

Closing this as stale.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman