Discussion Characters / TouhouProject

One thing we did discuss below where to primarily use art from PMiSS and SoPM on the character pages and then use ZUN art where it is not available otherwise. So beyond that I say go right ahead.

Question is if we should retain the 250 x 250 format or use the full pictures. If the latter then we should probably replace some of the ones from the fighting games with the full picture instead.

Edited by matteste

Given nearly every fighting character's trope list length, it's also possible to squeeze in official art from all eras where applicable.

"They played us like a DAMN FIDDLE!" — Kazuhira Miller, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Ok I have decided to go ahead with it, if no one takes the initiative then nothing is ever gonna happen. So this is how I have decided to do it.

• I will use art primarily from the art books on ALL the characters, including those with Moe and Alphes art for the sake of consistency. The lone exception for this is on the side characters and supplementary materials pages where they will be more varied, as well as DDC and Lo LK where I will instead use ZUN art and the main characters page where I'll use Moe art.
• I will use the full picture
• I have yet to decide how to approach the PC-98 side.
• If a character doesn't have official art that matches the rest then it will be left blank. Again Side materials and games will be the exception.
• Also, there will be no extra art on their pages, only one image per character.
• All art book images will be 350 pixels tall except for the main characters who will be 450 instead. The ZUN ones will be 350 as well.
• Due the the Aki sisters, Ichirin and Unzan, Seiga and Yoshika, use images with both I will rewrite their entries slightly to make them both in the same folder. Those that are rewritten will need cleanup later.

Edited by matteste

I apologise for a very late reply, but as of now certain characters lack a picture to represent them and some of them aren't represented individually and are thus placed into character groups.

If it's alright, can the pictures be reverted to how they used to and so further discussions can be made for the character page pictures?

Even now, if we were to use the artbook images, as new characters debut down the line in August, we would be facing a new problem.

Fair enough, provided progress is made and it doesn't stagnate again. Cause as Remipachu said, using fanart instead of official art is incredibly rude, both to ZUN and the artists as well as the copyright issues associated with all this. So if this mess of a Touhou character page can be changed and resolved reasonably then I am content. I will change back then (except for Reimu and Marisa. They're the heroins, they deserve full body, also Maribel and Renko will be kept as well due to their status as being part of the supplementary materials).

P.S.: Don't know what I was thinking when I changed Tenshi's, Suika's and Iku's despite them not having full body images in the games.

Edited by matteste

Might want to discuss the images in Image Picking, folks.

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

If not Image Picking. talk about this on the forum thread. As the lack of conversation here indicates, most people don't seem to have this page watchlisted, and there's been a fair bit of conversation on the topic already

I have to admit that not starting an image picking discussion was my blunder. Still, regardless of how this is approached it doesn't change the fact that we still got a problem to deal with.

Edited by matteste

The plan's going forward. What a shame, now I have to let go of another relic of my memories...

I got my political views from reddit and that's bad

I agree with this. Chucking out good art for mediocre-but-consistent art seems a silly idea; doing so to be consistent with a style that isn't actually used in mainline Touhou games seems silly and bad.

It's like we're playacting that that is the Official Touhou Artsyle or something.

Edited by 69.172.221.2

I agree with this. Chucking out good art for mediocre-but-consistent art seems a silly idea; doing so to be consistent with a style that isn't actually used in mainline Touhou games seems silly and bad.

It's like we're playacting that that is the Official Touhou Artsyle or something.

Edited by 69.172.221.2

I agree with this. Chucking out good art for mediocre-but-consistent art seems a silly idea; doing so to be consistent with a style that isn't actually used in mainline Touhou games seems silly and bad.

It's like we're playacting that that is the Official Touhou Artsyle or something.

Edited by 69.172.221.2

There's been plenty of discussion of this on the forums, and no one has been able to come to consensus. I don't think there'll ever be, either. But, as long as the images we end up with are accurate and show off relevant design elements, I don't care all that much

Hi people! :)

I'm very worried about the idea of changing everything again. I am a very big fan of the decision to Alphes Style everyone; the consistency obviously being the main argument here. The character pics shouldn't be a kinda contest over who can provide better and better fanart, but a simple, to-the-point depiction of the character.

I'm afraid that if we change everything back again, it will open the floodgates for person after person putting in their favorite fanart, changing it again and again, debating every little detail, bringing in personal preferences, etc. :( Maybe the Alphes Style is somehing that we can all learn to live with as a consistent compromise? One that not all may be super happy with, but happiness for all will never be achieved by anything anyway. :)

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

If we're going to change it, I vote for all ZUN-art.

All ZUN-art has the purist appeal. Better than all bad-imitations-of-a-fighting-game-spinoff-from-2004-art, anyway.

I vote for all many-and-various-and-wildly-contradictory-yet-equally-valid-interpretations art. Which is to say, to continue doing what we've been doing for the last five years.

(edit: Seriously, it is the dishonesty of the idea that gets me. Legislating some lowest-common-denominator style into existence, and collectively playing make-believe that it represents anything beyond tvtropes... can you imagine the confusion of somebody who gets into Touhou from reading this page, and then tries to play one of the games?

Touhou fanart is about creativity and individual interpretation! That's what the art should reflect!)

Edited by 69.172.221.6

All ZUN-art has the purist appeal. Better than all bad-imitations-of-a-fighting-game-spinoff-from-2004-art, anyway.

I vote for all many-and-various-and-wildly-contradictory-yet-equally-valid-interpretations art. Which is to say, to continue doing what we've been doing for the last five years.

(edit: Seriously, it is the dishonesty of the idea that gets me. Legislating some lowest-common-denominator style into existence, and collectively playing make-believe that it represents anything beyond tvtropes... can you imagine the confusion of somebody who gets into Touhou from reading this page, and then tries to play one of the games?

Touhou fanart is about creativity and individual interpretation! That's what the art should reflect!)

Edited by 69.172.221.6

All ZUN-art has the purist appeal. Better than all bad-imitations-of-a-fighting-game-spinoff-from-2004-art, anyway.

I vote for all many-and-various-and-wildly-contradictory-yet-equally-valid-interpretations art. Which is to say, to continue doing what we've been doing for the last five years.

(edit: Seriously, it is the dishonesty of the idea that gets me. Legislating some lowest-common-denominator style into existence, and collectively playing make-believe that it represents anything beyond tvtropes... can you imagine the confusion of somebody who gets into Touhou from reading this page, and then tries to play one of the games?

Touhou fanart is about creativity and individual interpretation! That's what the art should reflect!)

Edited by 69.172.221.6

Touhou fanart may be about creativity etc, but there's no reason we should reflect that since we're not about fanart. We're not a fanart site. Our goal here is to present in a way that's as unobtrusive as possible. One problem I've always had with our former policy is that a lot of fanart deviates too much from the standard design or, worse, shows too much expression and implies a context that doesn't actually exist. For example, the old fanime screenshot of Eirin where she was looking all serious and worried, or the old image we had for Satori where she was, god forbid, Moe. That kind of stuff isn't a problem in its own context, but we have no context here. Our goal is simply to show what the characters look like.

Now, to be fair, I'm sure that appropriately neutral fanart of various styles does in fact exist, but I really don't trust random editors to make choices that will satisfy all of us. Other than collectively voting on every single picture one at a time, I don't think we have a choice but to "legislate" something. If fake Alphes-style is something you find strongly objectionable I don't think it needs to be that, but there was already a precedent for using IAMP portraits for the characters who had them so it was already skewed in that direction and it seemed to fit.

Seriously though, is anyone allergic to ZUN art? A lot of people find it displeasingly crude, but, well, that's Touhou.

Edited by 216.99.32.45

You seem to be saying that a frowning Eirin or a moe Satori would be bad... for some unstated reason. Can you elaborate on what that reason it?

I've certainly never seen anybody object to a Touhou character being called moe before!

(I've no objection to ZUN art, except that replacing every image with it would an enormous amount of effort to solve a problem that by all the evidence doesn't exist.)

You seem to be saying that a frowning Eirin or a moe Satori would be bad... for some unstated reason. Can you elaborate on what that reason it?

I've certainly never seen anybody object to a Touhou character being called moe before!

(I've no objection to ZUN art, except that replacing every image with it would an enormous amount of effort to solve a problem that by all the evidence doesn't exist.)

You seem to be saying that a frowning Eirin or a moe Satori would be bad... for some unstated reason. Can you elaborate on what that reason it?

I've certainly never seen anybody object to a Touhou character being called moe before!

(I've no objection to ZUN art, except that replacing every image with it would an enormous amount of effort to solve a problem that by all the evidence doesn't exist.)

I prefer ZUN art. I don't see the need to use fanart when we have perfectly serviceable official art.

Check out my fanfiction!

You seem to be saying that a frowning Eirin or a moe Satori would be bad... for some unstated reason. Can you elaborate on what that reason it?

Because they give new readers incorrect impressions of the characters. Isn't the impression that the images have on new readers exactly what your complaint was based on? Someone who doesn't know who Eirin is might look at that picture and form an impression of her that is not only inaccurate to canon, but also inaccurate to fanon. It's exactly one artist's strange and weird interpretation of Eirin that literally no one else in the world shares. Except for the people who read our article and see that picture. Fanfic is a great place to show off sides of characters that haven't existed before or since, but this is a terrible place to do that.

Now, next you'll probably want to ask who made me the arbiter of all that is proper in terms of Touhou character portrayals, and that is a great question, the answer to which is I'm not and no one else is either. Which is why I think letting people choose pictures freely is bad. There's a lot of fanart out there, and every character has been portrayed in every possible way... most of which have absolutely nothing to do with the collection of tropes we attributed to them. In my mind, allowing any image with no filter is the same thing as allowing any trope to apply to any character. Which we don't. From the very moment we created this page, we had decided that Touhou characters have pre-existing qualities which are worth noting. Pictures which ignore that, and if anything mislead the audience as to what those qualities are, are worse than not having a picture at all. Those are dishonest, to the nature of the Tvtropes and the page itself.

Edited by 216.99.32.44

I'm gonna have to be blunt for a moment: you are deploying an immensely overweight solution (replace every image! twice!) to a nonexistant problem (somebody looked at a picture of a character expressing an emotion! now their head sings with dangerous and illicit thoughts!)

Can you link to a single instance of this problem occurring? Has this problem been observed in real life, or only in the land of hypothesis?

(Also, I've read you post three time, but I'm still not sure why a Touhou character looking moe is unacceptable...)

If you want to help the page, all you have to do is... nothing. Leave everything exactly as it is right now. Watch people swap out images whenever they find a better one, and don't edit war about it or tell them to do anything. The beauty of this way of helping is that you can do even when you're ostensibly doing other things, like eating or sleeping.

I'm gonna have to be blunt for a moment: you are deploying an immensely overweight solution (replace every image! twice!) to a nonexistant problem (somebody looked at a picture of a character expressing an emotion! now their head sings with dangerous and illicit thoughts!)

Can you link to a single instance of this problem occurring? Has this problem been observed in real life, or only in the land of hypothesis?

(Also, I've read you post three time, but I'm still not sure why a Touhou character looking moe is unacceptable...)

If you want to help the page, all you have to do is... nothing. Leave everything exactly as it is right now. Watch people swap out images whenever they find a better one, and don't edit war about it or tell them to do anything. The beauty of this way of helping is that you can do even when you're ostensibly doing other things, like eating or sleeping.

I'm gonna have to be blunt for a moment: you are deploying an immensely overweight solution (replace every image! twice!) to a nonexistant problem (somebody looked at a picture of a character expressing an emotion! now their head sings with dangerous and illicit thoughts!)

Can you link to a single instance of this problem occurring? Has this problem been observed in real life, or only in the land of hypothesis?

(Also, I've read you post three time, but I'm still not sure why a Touhou character looking moe is unacceptable...)

If you want to help the page, all you have to do is... nothing. Leave everything exactly as it is right now. Watch people swap out images whenever they find a better one, and don't edit war about it or tell them to do anything. The beauty of this way of helping is that you can do even when you're ostensibly doing other things, like eating or sleeping.

Has the problem with Alphes art been observed? No? Then why can't you just do nothing? It's already like this. Are you going to revert every change yourself or just... declare in this obscure discussion corner that we're not going to make major changes anymore and let it solve itself using the free market? Somehow I doubt it would solve itself though, so you'd probably choose to revert it, even though there's no indication of a problem.

It's perfectly fine to not like fake Alphes art, and I understand your complaint, but requiring me to read people's minds while not requiring that of yourself when you're making the same kind of argument seems a bit unfair.

And this is where you tell me that you've met people who were introduced to Touhou from this page, played a main series game, and were confused by the art. As if they wouldn't be confused by jumping from only fanart to ZUN.

Edit: Incidentally, I've never actually changed any of the pictures myself other than adding HM portraits when the game came out.

Edited by 216.99.32.44

I think you got misled somewhere... I have zero interest in reverting anything. I am 100% fine with letting the 'free market' handle things. Bad art will be replaced with better art and good art will stay in place.

All this process requires is that nobody tries to micromanage it.

I think you got misled somewhere... I have zero interest in reverting anything. I am 100% fine with letting the 'free market' handle things. Bad art will be replaced with better art and good art will stay in place.

All this process requires is that nobody tries to micromanage it.

I think you got misled somewhere... I have zero interest in reverting anything. I am 100% fine with letting the 'free market' handle things. Bad art will be replaced with better art and good art will stay in place.

All this process requires is that nobody tries to micromanage it.

...except for the fact that you already reverted them yesterday? On the Windows 3 page. I can see your edit history you know. You're imposing your will on this issue more than I'm imposing mine. I just complain a lot, while you apparently have the right to decide which pictures are better. Note that it wasn't exactly an administrative fiat that made them all Alphes in the first: someone (not me) just decided they were better and made the change. That's exactly what happens when you leave it to the free market. Changes get made willy nilly and many of them you'll disagree with and revert. What you're doing here isn't supporting freedom, you're just telling people not to make changes you, personally, don't like.

So essentially I guess I want to protect the page from both you and the Alphes fan(s).

Edited by 216.99.32.44

I certainly did revert his mass edit that page; that edit is the reason I'm here now. Every single one of his replacement images was worse. Up until then, his edits had been sorta 'questionable, but not terrible' — but mass-replacing a page, in a way that reduces the quality of the page, without explaining yourself either before after... is not the actions of a good wiki-citizen.

(Moko-tan is free to drop by and explain their side of the story, if they'd like.)

In any case, that edit was my impetus to go looking for discussion, and find this thread. :) I've go absolutely zero interest in 'imposing my will' on anything, and a fervent hope that nobody else tries to impose their will either.

And on that note, I'm going to bed.

I certainly did revert his mass edit that page; that edit is the reason I'm here now. Every single one of his replacement images was worse. Up until then, his edits had been sorta 'questionable, but not terrible' — but mass-replacing a page, in a way that reduces the quality of the page, without explaining yourself either before after... is not the actions of a good wiki-citizen.

(Moko-tan is free to drop by and explain their side of the story, if they'd like.)

In any case, that edit was my impetus to go looking for discussion, and find this thread. :) I've go absolutely zero interest in 'imposing my will' on anything, and a fervent hope that nobody else tries to impose their will either.

And on that note, I'm going to bed.

I certainly did revert his mass edit that page; that edit is the reason I'm here now. Every single one of his replacement images was worse. Up until then, his edits had been sorta 'questionable, but not terrible' — but mass-replacing a page, in a way that reduces the quality of the page, without explaining yourself either before after... is not the actions of a good wiki-citizen.

(Moko-tan is free to drop by and explain their side of the story, if they'd like.)

In any case, that edit was my impetus to go looking for discussion, and find this thread. :) I've go absolutely zero interest in 'imposing my will' on anything, and a fervent hope that nobody else tries to impose their will either.

And on that note, I'm going to bed.

Every single one of his replacement images was worse.

This is the problem. You're undoing changes because the images are "worse". You are making that decision on your own. Given the prior lack of any image policy, which you yourself embrace as the ideal, you had no basis whatsoever to make this decision, and therefore no basis to declare that Moko-tan did anything wrong. If you can't see the hypocrisy in that then it's beyond my power to show it to you.

Not that this matters at all. What we're here to decide is what makes a good image. Some people have decided that "Alphes style, fake or otherwise" makes a good image, you seem to think that the variety of images by different artists is worth preserving, and other people think that fanart itself is unnecessary and we should stick with ZUN's original designs. And presumably there are other options with their own pros and cons (PMISS/SOPM artwork? Too bad it's all black and white).

Which one of these options is "better" depends entirely on what our goals are, so I think we should establish that first. My goals are, in no particular order:

• Show the design of the character. Clothing design is one of the most important, if not the only thing we really need a picture to show. This requires that the picture be in color and zoomed out enough to show more than a face. I suppose it could be argued that we need to see their feet too, but I don't really care. Although I suppose sometimes feet are important, like for the various ghosts. Tengu geta are pretty interesting too.
• Clarity. There's a lot of good artwork out that's inappropriate simply because it's too abstract or stylized. This hinders the purpose of helping the reader know what the character looks like.
• Accuracy. I suppose this is where we already disagreed, but I think it's important that the images don't show the character "acting out of character". Characterization in fanfic varies wildly, but the characters do in fact have personalities. You have to know the rules before you can break them. Eirin looking worried is bizarre, given who she is. You need to come up with quite an explanation for that, which we do not have the means to provide. And quite frankly the only reason that image was there in the first place was because another person decided that using screenshots from one particular fanime was a good way to achieve consistency.
• Consistency. Having the images constantly change is kind of annoying.

Anyway, those are my goals. We don't have to meet all of them, but we certainly need some goals and it would be helpful if we had some we could agree on before we make any sort of decision. Even if that decision is to leave things alone.

(Clearly the best solution is ZUN art. You know it in your heart.)

Hi there. Mind if I jump in?

As "bad" as it supposedly is, I do think we should use all official ZUN art instead of "Alphes where we can, Alphes imitations where we can't". For one the mishmash of official and unofficial kinda bugs me. For two...Alphes's art has changed noticeably between SWR/GQ and HM, while ZUN's art has has the same style, but had been constantly evolving or something like that? If that makes sense.

For folks who don't have ZUN art somehow, I am sure art from another official source will do. Eh.

Sorry if you don't want my input.

Don't PM me. We don't like being PMed.

I don't really contribute much here, but I vote ZUN art as well. Why do we need to use fanart when there are official arts anyway?

Because as much as we love ZUN, his art is not that great. And he didn't even draw official art of some characters anyway, like Suika or Kasen.

Moko-Tan here (btw Im a girl). Sorry for the disturbs.

I decided to change the images into Alphes style to make the page more tidy and consistent. I even put on some quotes (thanks for the help to those who help putting more quotes). I see that you reverted the Alphes-style-images in Touhou three, but you have a point, they were not that good. Its alright, dairi (who makes the best alphes-style pics in my opinion) posted on Danbooru better looking images of the DDC cast and I already put them (except for the Tsukumo sisters, hence why I did not changed them).

I have no complains....well, just one. After watching the Touhou Windows Two character page for a while, I saw that someone reverted the alphes-Hina for the former fanart image that was there before (and it was not very good).

Edited by 201.240.218.222

I would like to make a suggestion. We can use art from PMISS and SOPM since it covers almost every character up to Ten Desires. I know they are black and white but atleast they are official and for those who don't like ZUN's art they are of higher quality.

The whole "using fanart" thing is terrible in the first place because a) it's unsourced b) there is no indication that it was used with permission and c) there is nothing wrong with the official art. I vote we use (like suggested above) the P Mi SS and So PM art where possible and ZUN's art wherever else. There is no reason we shouldn't use ZUN's art and it's super disrespectful to use fanart in its place. If it's from the side materials, just use caps of the art from it (ex for Kosuzu's art, just crop a picture of her from a scan).

Remember: reality is an illusion the universe is a hologram buy gold byyyye!

Agreed

It is used on other pages. Not the preferred style, but it's allowed.

Feel free to change it, though.

I'm about halfway done now and just wanted to share some thoughts.

<thoughts> Damn you, ZUN! What in the Hell of Blazing Fires could you possibly need a 100+ lolis in one friggin' series for? I'm so gonna demand some kind of cookie when this is over! And wouldn't you know it, I can edit things with my old account, now that I already made another one. How much longer is this Imperishable Night folder anyway? Finally done, time to save this and... nononononono, don't you dare crash on me right now, you lousy peace of—AAAAAARGH! *keyboard smashing time* </thoughts>

I think I'll go cry pass out now. Will probably try this again tomorrow when I've regained my will to live.

Finally finished with the whole thing. Fixed the example indentation as well, while I was at it. (Curse my OCD tendencies!) Anyone up for moving the subjective tropes to the YMMV page?

That applies to character sheets?

Never thought about it, but it probably should. Especially when the character sheet happens to be ten times longer than the main page, as is the case here.

Someone already moved the subjective tropes off of the main page (and were asking about doing something to the main page on the character sheet's discussion?).

Please don't move them off of the character sheet. I can't imagine the result being anything but horribly messy.

That was me again. While I can't find any official confirmation for this, I'd argue that a character sheet as a direct extension of the work page should have the same standards applied to it (which was the reason I went through that whole reformatting exercise in the first place). After all, if a work page without a character sheet has character specific subjective examples, we're supposed to move those to a YMMV page as well.

I'm not going to touch the page for now, if only because the list of what tropes are considered "subjective enough" isn't complete yet (and probably won't be for a while, considering the recent shift in priorities), but I don't think it's a bad idea in the long run. At the very least it will cut down on all the natter, thread mode responses and edit wars and we can all agree that is a good thing, right?

Edited by Kill-o-matic

And another thing.

The ultimate Touhou game, play as Reimu and fight your way through EVERY SINGLE STINKING CHARACTER. Have fun~.

I never really liked alphes' style to begin with, so I say we just go for the best images that clearly illustrate the character.

I don't know if people are going to notice this post, or if we should start a new topic about it. There's been talk in the Alternate Character Compendium forum thread about reverting back to the older character portraits on some characters. Personally, I'd prefer it if we went back to the alphes-style portraits for Hina, Kanako and Reisen II at least.

What I saw was more of a general agreement that a lot of the changes weren't for the better, not necessarily talk of reverting.

I'm not really certain how to best handle this, since the opening of the standards resulted in a minor edit war. We'd probably need a forum topic to handle it well.

I would like fewer Michii Yuuki images, though. Ideally 100% fewer.

Michii Yuuki's art is OK if it's in the character's nature to look cute. I was the first person to upload a Michii Yuuki drawing to the page because I couldn't find any better pictures of Chiyuri. I don't have a problem with using his artwork for the Aki sisters either. However, I wouldn't mind seeing more people use the Reitaisai 7 Picture Gathering as a source for portraits. It's easy to search through by entering "[character_name] pool:1250" into Danbooru's search box.

Every Touhou character is supposed to look cute, that is how ZUN designs them. Not much of an argument in a series where fanon routinely overwrites canon, I know. Complaining About Artists You Don't Like aside, shouldn't we strive for something like stylistic consistency, if at all possible?

As long as we judge the pictures by purely subjective standards, there can never be an agreement on which are the most suitable. The one objective criteria I can think of is how much the portrait matches canon, which is how I pick the ones I upload here - eye color, hair color, clothing details down to the last frill, character-associated accessories (the more the better), pose, background, etc. Of course with Touhou even after the filtering, you still usually end up with several options to choose from and it once again boils down to personal preference.

Michii Yuuki's art just happenes to match the canon portraits well for many characters and there was already some on the page, so I figured why not add more of the same. While I'm all for replacing the drawings with objectively better ones, and I do not ask anyone to like the same things as me, I'd like to point out the majority of the new images from the last batch are less in line with ZUN's versions of the characters than the old ones.

Edited by Kill-o-matic

• I'm pretty certain that Kanako and Utsuho were supposed to be imposing, not cute. Then there's characters like Keine, Ran, Mokou, Byakuren, Shou, etc., who have designs that are quite pretty, but not cute. Saying all of ZUN's designs are supposed to be cute is an insult to him.
• If we wanted stylistic consistency we'd use ZUN art. Or at least stick with Alphes mimicry.
• Resemblence to canon was something I looked for. I just also looked for clarity and art quality.
• I don't think pose and the background really matter. Only a handful of the poses are remembered, and the only backgrounds that shows up in fanworks are the Chireiden and Moriya shrine.

• Insult to ZUN, really? We are talking about the man who makes a living portaging horrifying man-eating mythological monsters as childish little girls, who feel compelled to dress like dolls and have tea parties with each other. And who thinks Yuuka is the ultimate example of moe. Anyway, from the ones you mention, you've only changed Kanako and Keine, neither of whom looks any more imposing than before to me.
• ZUN art is not consistent in the slightest not only between the PC-98 and Windows games, but from one game to the next. Obviously, I was talking about artists who can actually do things like perspective and proper anatomy.
• Once again, how do you define "quality". I can argue that Letty has terrible contrast, washed out coloring and the wrong hair color; that Flander's crystals are not symmetrical across both wings; that Wriggle's antennae should be swirly and not flat and that you can barely see them against the black background; that Keine's hat is way too small, her eyes are the wrong color and she shouldn't have a tail; that Hina looks like her spine just snapped from the weight of that ginormous ribbon; that Yamame's colors are off and you can't see her black sleeves against the black background; that Koishi's face looks only halfway drawn and that her hair should be green and so on. I know most of this is nitpicking, but at least it's stuff you can compare to the official portraits over at Touhou Wiki and say with a fair degree of certainty "This is closer to how the original author intended that character to look."
• Beyond that I don't see how anyone's preferences can take priority. If we can't agree on some kind of standards and are going to have to debate every little change made by any newbie who stumbles onto this page, I say go back to Alphes-style images. They may not be nearly as pretty but at least the sheet won't look like a total mess.

Edited by Kill-o-matic

(I realize this topic is rather old now, buuuuut: )

For characters that don't have art from the fighting games, why can't we just use their illustrations from The Grimoire of Marisa? (I think they're...Mokou, Kaguya, Eirin, Satori, Kanako, Shikieiki, Koishi & Flandre)

For instance, I think Flan's and Eirin's would work nicely.

The previous format was, in order:

1. Nearly a full screen of gumpf.
2. A list of links studded with PC98s, Phantasmagorical Flowers, Perfect Cherry Blossoms and other terms the reader may not know or care about.
3. The least important set of characters.

I can't do much about 2, but clarifying 1 and 3 is a step in the right direction.

Edited by hatless

1. Most of it is kind of important
2. If you don't know what those things mean, you're probably reading the article in part to find out. If you don't care what they mean, you probably shouldn't be here at all
3. The PC-98 characters are less important, barring the ones that crossed over to the Windows games. And even then Yuuka is pushing it

And, more to the point, I don't see why that was actually a problem

Most of the gumf is reproduced verbatim on the individual pages. And really needs to be edited down there too.

The important principle here is that character sheets exist for people who don't already know the minutia of the series, and that things that seem obvious or necessary to you are not obvious or necessary to people who just want to know what a Reimu is. They're our target audience.

Don't know what gumf is supposed to be, but people who don't know what's what can, oh I don't know, read the main article. You know, the one that 99% of new readers go through to get to this one. Also, we're not here to judge which character is or isn't "important", this isn't a popularity contest. The fact that the related works characters aren't as tropable is exactly why we decided they don't need a page all to themselves.

It's also bad wiki etiquette to split a page without discussing it first, like we did in the previous topic, especially when you ignore the decision reached in said discussion.

Edited by Killomatic Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.

It's been a week and I still don't think the page looks any better than it did before. An index with just four entries that doesn't even fill my screen all the way seems like a waste of space to me. I'd much rather have it be the way it was before or at least reopen the discussion again. Anyone feel like adding anything.

Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.

I say go for it. Even if it is never made official, the page already has plenty of fandom only examples.

Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.

PC-98/Windows/Print Works, or do they have to broken into smaller chunks than that?

Less than 500000 characters each. We're at 615498  ^*

now, and the Windows characters are about 65% of the page  ^*

^{169361 by my count}

, more if we wanted to keep the characters that made the jump to Windows on the page.

I'd make the split into the following categories:

• Characters/Touhou: Links to other pages. Reimu. Marisa.
• PC-98: Pretty self explanatory
• Embodiment of Scarlet Devil-Phantasmagoria of Flower View
• Mountain of Faith-current
• side-materials

Edited by muninn Now Bloggier than ever before!

The entire related works section is about the size of the average Windows game. They don't really need they're own page. Stick them at the end of one of the pages, or divide them by release date.

Might be worth putting Alice and Yuuka on the main page as well; a lot of people would look for them in the Windows game in which they appeared rather than the PC-98 one.

related works could probably stay on the main page, then. I didn't really realize how small they were.

How's the following for titles?

• Touhou
• TouhouPC98 (alternatively, could be "Touhou Classic", but I'm not sure that's appropriate for a section of the series which is less popular)
• TouhouWindowsTrilogy
• TouhouMountainOfFaithSeries

The last two could alternatively be "Windows One/Windows Two", I suppose.

If nobody objects (or would prefer to do it themselves), I'll make the move sometime tomorrow afternoon-ish (USA time)

Now Bloggier than ever before!

I'd prefer Windows one and two. "Windows Trilogy" would be inaccurate, since we're including PoFV, and I don't think I've ever seen the MoF engine games referred to as the "Mountain of Faith series" before (and we're including two fighting games).

Windows One and Two it is, then. (Actually, probably Windows Series One and Two)

Now Bloggier than ever before!

I see Fast Eddie has made the split for us. Do we still want to put Reimu, Marisa, Alice and Yuuka back on the main page? Should we put some kind of note indicating where they originated in the games in which they debuted?

We need a mod to unlock the Characters page. I'd like to change "Examples" to something else, and also add back the note about romanization.

Are we scrapping the idea of keeping the print works folders on the main page? Because I kinda prefer that to just a bare index. Not so sure about the big four though.

Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.

I don't think it really matters where they go, as long as we can tell people where to look. The page really needs a list of which works are in which subpage.

I don't like how bare the page looks now, either... it'd be nice if, as suggested, we could at least get Reimu and Marisa on there, since they're in virtually every game. Putting the print works on the front page would also be nice, as would noting what "Windows One" and "Windows Two" actually entail.

For now, I've added the note about romanization to all three of the subpages. I think we can keep them that way even if we do get the top page unlocked, since Spell My Name With An S occurs frequently in character profiles.

What do you mean "if we do get the page unlocked"? Is there any reason for it to stay locked? I already brought it up in two different threads, but the mods seem to be ignoring me.

Update: Finally unlocked, go crazy.

Edited by Killomatic Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.

Should we move Reimu and Marisa to the top page? Just them, and not Yuuka or Alice?

That would just break the organisation we have now. I'd rather we kept them under their games of origin.

Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.

Not just you. Though you'd need an exceptionally wide monitor for it to be more than a minor problem.

Okay, now the question is how it started without me changing any browser or display settings? It isn't happening on any other character sheet I've checked, so maybe this page's sheer size broke the formatting, kinda like what happened to the Negima character sheet. Don't we have some other kind of markup for forcing breaks between text and picture, because it's really annoying when you get to the Mo F folder.

...Oh dear. Yamame/Kisume and the Prismrivers cause problems as well. I don't know enough to help, sadly.

Dug a little deeper and it actually is a site-wide issue with the "quoteright" formatting, which for whatever reason is now ignoring things like lines and headers entirely. The solution is to put the [[<<]] tag before the element you don't want the picture to overlap.

Okay... this is officially weird. It worked just fine on the page preview and it even registered in the history but the [[<<]] tag somehow gets deleted when you save the changes. The [[hardline]] tag, which is supposed to do the same thing stays, but doesn't work. I tried editing another page that had preexisting [[<<]] tags and they disappeared without registering in the history and screwed the page up, which probably means this page had them too until yesterday. So, basically, I'm completely stumped. Any ideas?

This is the part where you make a thread in wiki talk or tech wishlist about the problem.

Or we're just screwed.

Going to have to come up with a lot of tropes for the minor characters, it looks like.

This sucks. We can always move them back to the left side and separate the character description from the examples with a line, like most character sheets do. Even though that leaves more empty space. Can't someone fixw the code so images don't overlap bullet points, how hard can that be? Also starting each section with the picture instead of the title and name would help somewhat.

Played around with the formatting a bit and as far as can tell from my monitor, they should all look more or less fine now. Had to cheat a little and add empty lines in a few cases, so it's not a perfect solution, but I think it's a good compromise in terms of visual presentation.

Not quite perfect, but looks a lot better now.

I don't see how the "almost part of canon" argument works; we don't have entries for the fan-characters either.

And everybody shows up in Nekokayou, including a good number of other non-canon characters.

Edited by Hylarn

It was discussed previously that Rin Satsuki wasn't canon at all, but it would be like saying she is a fan character, which isn't really true; again, she was created by ZUN and found in E So D's code and a Comiket ad for the same game. Much more notable than fan characters, especially if the article intends to have a description of every single character that appears in the games and other official works. Quite a few fans include Rin Satsuki as part of Touhou because she partially showed up in E So D, so therefore she should be listed.

And, if you had a Fanon section for well-known Touhou fan characters, I don't think Rin Satsuki could fit in there. Because she's not a fan-created character.

Rin Satsuki was actually a major character for one arc in Nekokayou.

Also, the article has speculative pictures of characters who haven't actually been drawn, like Myouren Hijiri and Layla Prismriver, so these depictions are not canon. Shouldn't they not be included either?

Edited by Mugendai

She's not canon. Being created by ZUN doesn't make her canon, since she never actually appeared. We're not even certain that the name and design belong to the same character.

"Quite a few"? The vast majority of fans aren't aware of who she is(n't).

We do not have a fanon section. We are not likely to create one either. Stop bringing it up.

So was Meimu. That doesn't really matter.

...Probably not, but that's a seperate discussion.

PC 98 characters are also probably not canon anymore, but they're still recognized. That aside, I still don't think Characters/Touhou is complete without an entry on Rin Satsuki, in the interest of it being an informative article.

As for the name and design not belonging to the same character, that could be the case, but it does seem like another case of the fans giving an unnamed character a name, except from a different source. Which might be just as well.

Touhou wiki readers are likely to have heard of her, at the very least, having stumbled onto the article about her. Also, unlike you, I see many people having heard of her. Only really those who have a large enough involvement in Touhou, but still.

I am not saying you have a fanon section, nor asking you to include fan characters, nor asking you to create a Fanon/Touhou. Anyone could do the latter, however, as this is a wiki, particularly one with There Is No Such Thing As Notability. I don't really care, though. I am merely stating that she is a special case, and that she would not fit under the classification of "fan character", because some people will inevitably bring up the point of her being "just like fan characters". On the other hand, what we assume about her IS fanon...

My point of her being put in some fanworks still stands.

And finally, I should say that there was a previous discussion about her on this thread a while ago; it is now archived. I'm bringing this topic up again because I have my own points to state. The previous discussion is also why I kept mentioning fan characters.

Edit: I just stumbled onto this: | http://www.spriters-resource.com/pc_computer/touhou6/rinsatsuki.png◊

Seems more likely to me that Rin Satsuki looks like the character in the circle cut, but the sprites could actually be an older version of Rumia.

Edited by Mugendai

The purpose of the character sheet it primarily to list tropes related to characters, and secondarily to help fans keep track of who is who. The only trope related to Rin is Dummied Out, and she doesn't really show up often enough (seriously, I see HRtP characters more often) for keeping track of her to be a major worry.

I suppose. The wiki article had been useful for finding out who is who, especially when I started enjoying Touhou works and some of them had a particularly large amount of Touhou characters. (Touhou Mother for example.) I just think Rin Satsuki will start to be mentioned more often, but, of course, that will be quite a bit later. There are certainly a few obsessive fans of her, however.

Dragon? Something from Wild and Horned Hermit, I guess?

The dragon.

-__- Just because ZUN finally put a hermit into the series... We'll make the entry when there's an actual character to back it up.

Besides, we already have dragon: Meiling.

On a related Wiki gripe (one that really applies to TV Tropes as a whole, not just this page, but it's a problem today), could people please use the "preview" button BEFORE posting their changes? The "page history" list today was flooded with one person who apparently couldn't decide on the wording of their edit, so they kept submitting it and then going back in and changing it again. It's really annoying to have to scroll through all that.

Sorry about that, I thought I was keeping to all the image uploading restrictions. In my defense, you did say to go for the best possible images and editing low-res pics in JPG sometimes makes them grainy, but if page size is such a concern, I guess I can live with that. Just wish someone had told me that before I replaced most of the gallery, but whatever.

You can still see it occasionally, particularly if you're looking at older stuff. It should probably mentioned somewhere, though not as a Woolseyism.

It's mentioned on the meme page and indirectly mentioned on the Japanese Pronouns page, and that's really more than it deserves.

Well, it's not helping matters that it's currently plastered on a "Touhou influences" page on the wiki. Pardon me for venting, but that's one of the things I hate about that wiki: people just post whatever, and even if it WERE to come from ZUN's mouth, they never cite the interview or whatever. So there's no way of telling if that page is true or just pure speculation.

It's one thing to say that Yue Ayase is an expy of Patchy, since they are VERY similar characters, and Akamatsu even had Yue dress up as Patchy in one chapter. But, as you pointed out, the only similarities between Reimu and Sayo/Pocky are that they are miko in shooting games — and the second part of that wasn't even true of Highly Responsive to Prayers. And the game premise of P&R (miko fights supernatural creatures from Japanese folklore) isn't particulary unique, so I don't see much of a case for saying that Touhou as a whole took that aspect (further making the similarity between them seem coincidental).

I'm not going to come out and say, "No, it's pure coincidence, they're not expies", but, despite the fact that There Is No Such Thing As Notability, this is really one of those cases where I'd really like some source to confirm that it was really ZUN's intention to emulate Sayo/Pocky.

Would it help if the titles were in a smaller font?

I'm referring here specifically to the extra titles for Reimu, Mima, Marisa, and Alice. Just making them smaller wouldn't help with the balance.

I'm going to vote "no". As you point out, it'd throw off the balance, since some characters would have half a dozen titles (Marisa, Reimu, Remilia, Yukari, etc.) and others would still have one or none. If people REALLY want to let everyone know all the other titles, just put a link to the titles page on the wiki.

We might want to spend some time deciding how to choose them, since there have been a lot of edits over this from a lot of people. Right now there are still/again titles on the page that aren't the most common one used for the character. (Jeez, going by the wiki page, "Ordinary Magician" is the most consistently used title in the whole series.) Personally, I'd also think that it's better to lean away from StB and DS titles when there's an alternative, since they seem to have been actually made up by Aya and Hatate as opposed to the "objective" titles which apparently sprang from the aether; also that it may be good to consider any that are, as far as anyone can determine, well-known or notable to the fans (like I remember "Super Youkai Warhead" and "Hell's Traffic Accident" both got a lot of jokes and fanart when they popped up).

(Ultra-late answer, but...) At this point, it's approaching "no". Touhou Wiki has demoted her to "nameless midboss fairy". It's true we DO have a (technically) nameless midboss fairy on the list (Daiyousei), and we have a nameless giant catfish (which we call Namazu, but Touhou Wiki doesn't acknowledge that except as a redirect and a fun fact), but there's nothing particularly interesting or unusual about this nameless fairy, and it's not likely to work its way into the fanon like Daiyousei has. Heck, most of us probably wouldn't have been aware of it were it not mentioned here and in create.swf.

The most I can tell from picking around Google for a few minutes is that it's a X-Men parody involving Chen that was released at this year's Reitaisai. It's on the "Potential Comics" list on Touhou Wiki, and following links from there resulted in a translated copy.

From the cover (haven't gotten around to reading it), it looks like "Chen = Wolverine". I'm not going to argue the "badass" part, but given that Google only returned a few hits that specifically mentioned the comic (Googling "X-Chen" tended to turn up a lot more "Ran X Chen" hits), at least on the first three or four pages of hits, I'm at the moment doubtful about the "memetic" part.

Edited by copycatzero

Why not? Giant Robots are characters too.

The three finest things in life are to splat your enemies, drive them from their turf, and hear their lamentations as their rank falls!

I'd say not. It's not actually sentient, playable, fightable, or possessing of either dialogue or fanon. Basically, it's not really a character.

Edited by Hylarn

Does Touhou have a Trivia Page? Put Hisoutensoku there then.

The three finest things in life are to splat your enemies, drive them from their turf, and hear their lamentations as their rank falls!

Hisoutensoku's about as much a character as the dancing man balloon outside a car dealership is a member of its marketing staff.

Keep in mind, though. That it was Eirin who STARTED the rumors. It's specifically mentioned in Cage in Lunatic Runagate that as soon as Reisen II arrived, Eirin had Reisen I telepathically asking the moon rabbits on the moon if there were any rumors about a rebellion. Eirin even comments that Reisen I can't talk to Reisen II, or know whether there are rumors or not.

This was specifically to CAUSE the rumors. So that she could "protect" Yorihime from the rumors of rebellion that she created. (Thus securing that the Moon wouldn't hunt them any more.) We have two different plans here, Yukari's for the lulz, and Eirin figured out enough to get involved and achieve her own goals.

Oh, yea, I forgot about that part. I was just addressing the "So Yea" reference, but I'm probably misinterpretting what that was meant to infer, as well.