The wiki's entry on Inaba. A scenario credit can mean anywhere from a general idea of what should happen to a detailed outline, but he wasn't writing the dialogue.

Huh, that makes sense. I've always been curious about exactly how he works with the artists on those things - I know for Inaba, which he was less involved with, he says he just gave Arata a very rough idea of what to do, which characters to use when and such. And even the three fairies series switching artists didn't seem to change that much. With things like setting information that pops up in those series, it's hard to believe the artists would presume to come up with it on their own, but who knows about the details... (Actually, come to think of it, SSiB did get at least one small allusion in the games, I should edit that.) The question of what ZUN's actually written gets more complicated all the time, it seems.

Okay, this is all kind of spelled out in Akyuu's Monologue. Note, though, that it's a barrier of common sense, not strictly running on disbelief. I'm not certain that Youkai would literally vanish in the outside world, and even less certain that I've seen anyone claim that they would.

Repeating what I said, Akyuu's known to be an Unreliable Narrator, so she doesn't spell it out like you claim. (I specifically mentioned the monologue in my initial post, too, which implies I've read it.)

She's not omniscient, and ZUN shows that through discrepancies in what Akyuu writes compared to the actual dialogue or events and scripts of the games. She contradicts herself on more than one occasion, even in the very monologue you just linked. The fact she openly speculates several different things in her monologue means that she can't be the Word Of God.

Just because the Hakurei Barrier is said to be the so-called the "barrier of common sense" doesn't mean that Gensokyo exists from the world's disbelief; it just keeps the world from easily interacting with what's inside the barrier—be it youkai or humans. I see it as no different from how Keine, in Imperishable Night, hid the human village from youkai by "eating its history." Keine didn't actually eat the village; it was just a form of camouflage.

Yet, it seems like fans want it to mean that things can only live in Gensokyo if enough people believe it doesn't exist.

As for the people who either claim Gensokyo runs on disbelief or that its inhabitants can't survive outside it, here's some examples:

On this article

* A Wizard Did It: Pretty much the explanation for anything odd that happens. Gensokyo as a whole supposedly runs off the disbelief of the outside world so no level of weirdness is out of reach.

* The Magic Goes Away: The reason Gensokyo was created in the first place.

In The Magic Goes Away

* Gensokyo, the setting for Touhou, is the land created because the magic went away when humans lost faith in myths as science progressed. All the youkai that existed from myth left for Gensokyo so that they could continue to exist as the "regular world" forgot about magic and monsters. Touhou is notably more upbeat about the whole affair than most other examples, however, as the various Cute Monster Girls are shown as perfectly happy with the arrangement.

In Clap Your Hands If You Believe

** Furthermore, the setting of Touhou as a whole somewhat inverts it: active disbelief in something in the outside world may cause it to appear in Gensokyo. For instance, in the manga Silent Sinner in Blue, Rinnosuke is able to easily acquire information on the moon landing, because enough people in the outside world have started to believe that it was faked; later on, Marisa comments that if a Gensokyo had oceans, it would have to be filled with sea monsters and krakkens and such. In another story, Rinnosuke deduces that the Cresded Ibis has become endangered or extinct in the outside world because of a sudden proliferation within Gensokyo.

In Gods Need Prayer Badly

** Touhou also has an inversion, as Gensokyo itself runs off of the disbelief of the outside world, being a repository for everything in which humans stopped believing. The actual gods  ^*

^{or possibly just shrine gods, the specifics are unclear}

require more normal faith.

In Fantasy Kitchen Sink

* The Touhou Project features Gensokyo, an almost literal Fantasy Kitchen Sink. It's heavily implied that whatever becomes fantasy (magic, monsters, gods, near-extinct animals) is dumped there.

Like I said, I'm gonna need more convincing evidence than someone telling me "Akyuu spelled it out."

Er, I don't see any contradictions in Akyuu's statements about the barrier. And the draft of the spell card rules is from the same time period as the barrier, so it's pretty likely that some documentation about how the barrier works survived.

Re: Technological issues: The lunarians are explicitly fantastic. And there's never anything said implying that science is harmful, just denial of existence.

And the youkai explicitly need an antagonistic relationship with humans to survive. Is it really hard to believe that people denying that they exist would be a problem?

"And the draft of the spell card rules is from the same time period as the barrier, so it's pretty likely that some documentation about how the barrier works survived."

Akyuu's notes in both Reimu's character page and the Spell Card Rules section of the Unresolved Works seem to imply that they were created with Reimu's involvement, and that they're not related to the mock duels and showboating that the youkai did after Gensokyo's founding. For all we know they're there to explain how things worked between ZUN's PC-98 games and Windows games.

While we're talking about Akyuu, let's underline the fact she admits she's an Unreliable Narrator:

"Somehow I know about things that happened during my life as Aichi, and even as Are, but unfortunately my memories of Gensokyo in ancient times are not very clear."

"I first began compiling the materials for the Gensokyo Chronicles about the time I turned 18 as Aichi, which was over a thousand years ago. Literacy was not as wide-spread in those days, so the Gensokyo Chronicles were more something to be left for later generations than something that was to be read by my contemporaries. It's hard even for me to read the writing of the Chronicles from that era, so it didn't serve much use as materials for this compilation."

If she can't quite recall what Gensokyo was like in ancient times, and she didn't use her early Chronicles for materials, how can we be sure she's correctly telling the history of Gensokyo? Especially since Gensokyo, as she puts it in the foreword, is "a closed world, without any humans that keep historical records" while "youkai remember distorted versions of past events, so Gensokyo could not face the truth particularly well."

"And the youkai explicitly need an antagonistic relationship with humans to survive. Is it really hard to believe that people denying that they exist would be a problem? "

If there are places where it's stated that they can't survive without eating or attacking humans, then there's places that contradict those statements where it's said only their powers will gradually vanish (see aforementioned spell card rules)—not their existence.

The problem here is that a lot of people take it to mean they will cease to exist from denial of their existence. On the other hand, things like Perfect Memento (ESPECIALLY the stuff not written by Akyuu) instead says that Youkai will grow powerless if they don't exercise their powers—which isn't the same thing as vanishing just because a lot of people don't believe you exist.

Everywhere I've listed, the viewpoint of the tropers adding those examples is that the mere existence of Youkai depend on people believing they exist, and if people disbelieve in them, they vanish.

So far, I've seen nothing that confirms this viewpoint in ZUN's stuff. It seems more like part of the fanon that permeates the fandom.

Her memories of her first two incarnations aren't clear. This doesn't matter, as we're discussing events that happened between the two most modern ones.

Oh, and there's these quotes:

"Her memories of her first two incarnations aren't clear. This doesn't matter, as we're discussing events that happened between the two most modern ones."

Fair enough.

"Oh, and there's these quotes:"

... Which is more than proof of her role as the Unreliable Narrator rather than the Word Of God, because:

And:

Akyuu goes on to explain that the youkai feel that what they have in Gensokyo is enough and they are satisfied with it, to enforce her speculation that the youkai have no reason/motivation to attack humans outside Gensokyo.

Why would Akyuu, in her monologue, try to explain the motivations that youkai have against leaving Gensokyo, if they simply can't because disbelief in their existence is too strong in the outside world? Surely if it were true that youkai appear in Gensokyo when the real world's beliefs can no longer sustain them, then Akyuu wouldn't have speculated—or would have even flatly said "no youkai ever try to leave Gensokyo because they'd cease to exist once they do."

By the same token, if you move from one place to another, you can say that you have "ceased to exist" in the place you once lived, correct?

In other words, I think the fandom is taking a conveniently worded line on Akyuu's part as proof that Rinnosuke's theory is not only correct, but that youkai can also be permanently destroyed from disbelief and therefore cannot exist outside Gensokyo. For that reason, I think some serious changes need to be made to a number of the entries I noted above.

It seems pretty clear to me that it's fanon to a lot of people, despite the fact that it's not reliable canon as there are way too many things that poke holes in the concept (information on Yukari from both the games and Akyuu's own speculation, Muenzuka's information, the counterpoints to Rinnosuke's theory, etc).

Perhaps the prudent thing to do would be to label it as such.

Look, the monologue is pretty clearly ZUN explaining the history of Gensoukyou. It is intended to be canon. That some of wording strongly implies that Rinnosuke's theory is correct is because ZUN always intended Rinnosuke's theory to be correct. The number of issues with it can be put down to ZUN being at least slightly drunk at all times.

While your theory is decent, that it requires us to write off a lot of exposition as being from an Unreliable Narrator makes it pretty clear that it belongs in Wild Mass Guessing.

Gee, I wasn't aware that any character with theories and speculation—especially speculation with obvious contradictions, as Rinnosuke's theory has—is automatically the Word Of God.

Rinnosuke's theory takes the appearance of just about anything in Gensokyo to be proof that it's become fantasy to the real world, regardless of the reality. Plenty of people before me in multiple places—including the main Touhou page—have pointed out that there are too many contradictions to his theory. For example, electronics that were current-generation at the time of their appearance (e.g. Apple iPod) made their way through the barrier. Other items still used in the modern age which haven't "passed into fantasy" also appear in his shop. (Not to mention people from the outside.)

There's also that blurb on the main page about him deducing that the Crested Ibis must be extinct because a "sudden proliferation" at the time of his particular Curiosities in Lotus Asia issue—when actually, around the time that particular work came out, they moved from "extinct in the wild" to "endangered" because an ongoing reintroduction program (backed by an even older and more extensive breeding program) has actually saved them from extinction.

If Rinnosuke's theory was actually true, the sudden proliferation would have began four or five decades ago, not at the time that Curiosities in Lotus Asia was published—or, if Rinnosuke's theory was correct, then the Crested Ibis would have suddenly started to vanish from Gensokyo as its existence was saved in the real world.

Either way, Rinnosuke wasn't even making a definitive proclamation. He briefly wondered if the Ibis became fantasy in the real world, then the subject moved on to how to cook the Ibis. At the end, Rinnosuke speculates that the Crested Ibis made it into Gensokyo through the Hakurei Shrine, as it was caught near there. He was relieved to know this because it pointed away from the extinction of the Crested Ibis, which—if it was extinct—would have been evidence that his theory was correct.

Although he was just wondering aloud for a moment, some fans took it as proof that his theory is 100% right.

Face it, Hylarn—Akyuu and Rinnosuke aren't infallible mouthpieces for ZUN. They're not omniscient, and don't have complete information on everything—they speculate, they make guesses. There's a reason a trope like Unreliable Expositor exists; not all exposition is 100% accurate.

If anything, they're avatars of that trope. A number of fans have recognized how much the Touhou fandom relies on fanon because very little is definitively stated, and ZUN seems to make a point of keeping details vague for people to decide for themselves what Gensokyo is like to them.

What irritates me is the insistence that this particular fanon interpretation is passed off by some tropers (including you) as definitive canon when so much points the other way.

Look, the point I'm trying to make is that ZUN probably intends for this theory to be true. He wouldn't have brought it forward several times without any opposing theories if he intended otherwise. You can argue against it if you like, but don't go deleting entries because you dislike it.

Hylarn, that's just an unsubstantiated opinion you're stubbornly claiming is fact.

The fact of the matter is, Akyuu and Rinnosuke don't have all the answers. They're trying to make sense of Gensokyo from their perspective, and that involves a lot of speculation on their part. Just because Rinnosuke has a theory that he brings up several times doesn't mean ZUN intends for it to be 100% true.

If ZUN intended for it to be true, events within Touhou's story would consistently vindicate that theory—but they don't. You know what they call a theory that doesn't live up to the events displayed? Debunked.

All you have is a fan's opinion masquerading as canon.

Since Touhou is a series that thrives a lot on fanon, that would be fine if it were noted to be a fan's interpretation—but none of the examples I've listed do that. They're all trying to pass off as canon concepts. That's not acceptable.

"You can argue against it if you like, but don't go deleting entries because you dislike it. "

Hmm ... I wonder, have I really said I intended to delete those examples? Let's take a look at what I've been saying thus far in all the comments I've made:

Looks like I never said I intended on going on a deletion spree. Unless, of course, you consider rewriting examples to explain that they are fanon concepts to be the same as deleting them.

Nothing in canon is consistent, but when ZUN intends for something to ambiguous he makes it obvious. Looks at Sakuya's entry in PMiSS, for instance. The concept is insane, and I don't like it myself, but it's about as well established as anything else in canon.

You pretty much just pegged Akyuu's role as Unreliable Narrator—though perhaps it's more accurate to say she's an Unreliable Expositor. Either way, her entry on Sakuya presents that story as a theory—and she makes note of a number of other theories. We're obviously not talking about a theory in the scientific sense here, but Wild Mass Guessing.

Akyuu leaves enough speculation there that just about any fan with their personal fanon about Sakuya could claim that Akyuu supports their pet theory—and yes, that's even with taking into account the fact that Akyuu spends most of the time discussing one theory in specific.

Again, when you're faced with an unreliable narrator or expositor, the only thing you can do is match up their claims or statements to what actually happens or what is verifiable. Rinnosuke's theory that things only show up in Gensokyo when they become fantasy got debunked through multiple pieces of evidence.

For her part, Akyuu provides a lot of speculation and theory. The only things that can be taken for fact are the things that are shown happening for sure in the games or ZUN's scenario-written works.

It's not that "canon is inconsistent," it's that the fans who believe so are taking everything said by Touhou characters as 100% true, when that isn't possible. (After all—if Akyuu's treated as the Word Of God, then Reimu probably never defeated Yuka Kazami because Akyuu considers it "very doubtful" in her footnotes for Yuka's article ... even though in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, Reimu says "Everything went back to normal when I defeated you back then!" when she's about to fight her during Yuka's scenario.)

ZUN's known to be a Teasing Creator, but that doesn't mean what the fans think is always going to be exactly as they turn out when he finally spells it out. In fact, there's that fan-made anime Touhou Project Side Story that tried to examine the Lunarians and Kaguya's relation to them, which then got utterly Jossed when Silent Sinners in Blue came out.

Again—those examples should be reworded so that they are noted to be the fanon that they are, because it's pretty clear that it is not something laid down by canon.

Speaking of which, while we're on the subject of things getting Jossed by ZUN, why don't we take a look at, say ... the prologue to Perfect Cherry Blossom?

Hmm ...

Screw it. Nothing I say is getting through. Make the damn edits, and if you do something too bizarre I'll just edit it back.

I don't see why it has to be all one way or the other here. There's no question that Gensokyo was deliberately conceived and created as something of a haven for things the modern world didn't believe in, which implies that they need or want a haven. So it's pretty reasonable to conclude that the steadily modernizing world is a problem for youkai — whether they actively lose power from disbelief or it just screws up their lifestyles — but that doesn't have to mean it will automatically destroy them. I guess Gensokyo itself could sort of draw such things to it (or have good word-of-mouth advertising among monsters?), as the boundary is supposedly as much a conceptual division between fantasy and realism as a physical wall; but that too wouldn't have to mean that all mythical creatures inevitably end up there, and it's abundantly clear that individual objects and people can also just wander in on their own. These things do not contradict each other.

Speculation is a good thing, but oversimplification often looks deceptively similar. And interpretation is good too, but it's true that you really can never truly know what ZUN intends if he doesn't state it. The problem here appears to be less the content of the statements being disputed than the fact that they are statements, decisive and clear renditions of something that was neither clear nor decisive originally. Yes? There's no need for them to be so polarized.

Oh — but on the small side note of gods needing faith, Sanae's profile says, "When people lose faith in gods, the gods lose their power. They can't manifest their divine virtues. This is the same as death, for a god." Which is kind of an interesting distinction, actually.

And now, it's time to poke holes in Trev's flawed speculation!

Except it is, obviously, because it's not the only condition required to cross the border. It's more like a safeguard to protect the inhabitants that enter, so that they'll have a safe refuge when they can no longer press on in the outside world. Various objects and people can fall through completely by accident, regardless of how many people believe them or not. Further as well, there's Maribel and Renko, who seem to have an idea of Gensokyo's existence, even though they might not know specifically about it. Yet still, a note that Maribel wrote ends up in Gensokyo hundreds of years in the past. Obviously Maribel believes in the note she wrote, and Renko too if she was aware of it. If disbelief is the only entry requirement, then explain that.

It doesn't. Funny that. It's not actively created by disbelief, but meant as a safeguard against it. It just happens that things no longer believed to exist in the outside world end up there because, surprise, people are willing to accept it exists.

Also yes, Keine literally erased the village from existence. They got better though once Keine wrote them back into history.

And now I reveal just how little you thought about all this.

A youkai's powers are what, their innate abilities and specific 'magical power' they get. Let's go under that assumption then. Now, if a youkai's powers are based on belief, then they obviously have to exercise their powers in view of humans in order to strengthen them. In a world where scientific explanations are sought for everything though, a handful of people that see something unusual will just be dismissed as having seen things, and no one will seriously buy into it unless they see it themselves, and with time the scientifically inclined witnesses will come to suspect some kind of reasonable explanation for what they say other than 'it was magic'. Since a youkai would need unwavering belief in their existence, they obviously can't kill everyone they come across either. They also can't just outright go on a rampage, because that would just bring down humans looking to destroy them.

So if no one believes in them and they lose their powers, then what? Well obviously they can't, say, control darkness anymore, but is that really all there is to it? Especially if the youkai in question is the embodiment of a concept rather than just a magical creature. If no one believes in Rumia's power to control darkness, and she loses power, wouldn't she also lose the power to manifest herself as an embodiment of, say, fear of the dark? What about Mystia? If no one believes in the power or existence of a youkai bird and she loses her powers, does she become mortal, losing her youkai regeneration and strength? Or does she become a normal bird? If she does fade away, no doubt she'd end up back in Gensokyo anyway, since people there believe in Night Sparrows.

Is Akyu a youkai? No? Oh, well, then I suppose it's not something she would be familiar with or know much about, which would explain the need for speculation. Has she ever crossed the border in her life to watch the effects of a youkai leaving? Probably not, which is why she's forced to speculate on reasons. Of course, the main reason it would require speculation in the first place if they cease to exist after they leave is mainly because she cannot prove that youkai she doesn't personally know stop existing once they leave, which is something she would have absolutely no chance of knowing in advance. Your argument basically requires one to assume that Akyu knows what every youkai is doing at all times, and what happens to them if they cross the border, even if she's not personally there on the outside to see it herself.

Of course, then there's also the idea that they just disappear in the outside and reappear in Gensokyo anyway, meaning that they don't leave because it's pointless, and they just end up back where they started, which is fine for, say, individuals or small groups looking to abduct people from the outside, or short little jaunts. Why would they have any reason to try to escape to a world that can't support them, when they can simply use it as a consequence free playground instead and always end up back home, safe and sound? Oh gee, sounds like a rather solid explanation.

Let's consider something, shall we? First being Yumemi and her whole deal with the dimensional traveling science vessel. She very obviously comes from an outside world with much more advanced technology, to say nothing about the backstory given about the world she comes from. Sort of the same with Maribel and Renko, who are residents of the outside world, which is not only implied to be the real world, but also seems to be some indeterminate point in the near future. Who is to say that the timeline of events in Gensokyo match up with events of the actual real world we live in as opposed to the slightly more fantastical 'real world' of Touhou?

Also, just because something exists in the outside world and is believed in doesn't mean it cannot be in Gensokyo as well. After all, I think that trees and plants and, oh hey, humans, along with pretty much everything else that modern society has, would be completely absent if they retroactively disappeared from Gensokyo once belief in something sparked back up. This is a silly notion to believe in and you are a silly person for considering it.

I lol'd heartily.

As opposed to ideas that require complete ignorance and blind leaps of logic?

Of course, all of this is likely long past the fact. I just found it hilarious how pretty much all your speculation was based on such flawed ideas. The entire thing can just be deflated with a single question even, that the guy above already presented: If disblief in their existence doesn't affect youkai, magic and all that, why did anyone feel the need to create a pocket dimension in order to protect the inhabitants from a shrinking belief in the mystical?

Hum, I see someone decided to squawk up the wrong column for her newspaper.

You don't seem to realize this, but much of what you've quoted concerning Trev is out of context concerning his intentions. I'm not quite sure where you're trying to go with this, whether you're actually sincere or trying to skew things, but...

"[...] if Gensokyo truly ran on the powers of disbelief, shouldn't be possible."

is him attempting to debunk a rather firm belief in the fandom he observed:

"I've been bugged by the repeated claim that every youkai's existence hinges on Clap Your Hands If You Believe, and that Gensokyo is a last-resort refuge for creatures dying of disbelief."

Now,

"Gensokyo [doesn't] exist from the world's disbelief; it just keeps the world from easily interacting with what's inside the barrier [...]"

is similar enough to:

Various objects and people can fall through completely by accident, regardless of how many people believe them or not.

that there's really no substantial differentiation to warrant an argument here. Both sentences refer to the idea that the barrier is not as firm as some would like to believe. Most of what both people are saying here actually supports one another in some way.

This leads me to believe that Mode came to see Trev's post in a very different angle than intended, and as such, due to similar contexts, all this is achieving is adding more weight against Hylarn's contention of credibility in their context.

I am amused myself that for someone that speaks of speculation, ignorance, and blind leaps of logic, they're distorting things heavily, willingly or not, to enjoy themselves for whatever reason. What I am not amused at though, is the execution in such notions due to their apparent result of actually supporting it.

Finally,

I lol'd heartily.

As opposed to ideas that require complete ignorance and blind leaps of logic?

Next time, before you try to assume in your speculation that Trev is uneducated in his side of things, you should try to pay more attention to those you quote. Along with the above, you seem to overlook that much of what he referenced is just as easily reachable in archived data as Hylarn's arguments. The only difference is they're giving their own feeling on how the data is to be interpreted. Just like how you're giving your own feeling on how Trev's notions should be interpreted. Without much to provide otherwise really, since all I'm really seeing is that the two of you are talking quite the same thing, except Trev took a debunking angle while you're taking a supporting angle.

I do hope your later articles will be better representative of the facts, Tengu Reporter-san.

I don't think there was a conscious decision on that. Personally, I'll just say I'm in favor of exercising some restraint in discussing the minutiae of shipping simply because the Touhou fandom seems to ship everything in every configuration. It's pointless to note one pattern one ship can fall into when every other possibility under the sun is also being explored, and you can pretty much expect every shipping trope by default to get used. (And it is indeed rather pointless as well to note that one ship has little canon support when the shipping as a whole has a pretty loose relationship with canon). I mean, there are a heck of a lot more sets of common Ship Mates in the Touhou fandom — do we want to list all of them?

Which is not to say that shipping tropes need to be avoided entirely, as it is a big part of the fandom (like most fandoms), but it's worth stopping to ask whether they really stand out as especially prevalent or noteworthy.

That's basically my take on it. Not to say that it wouldn't be fun to try and compile a list of all the Touhou ships (although the wiki already has one, or at least a partial one), but the main page doesn't quite seem like the place to do it.

You're wrong. Gensoukyou was originally a 'dream world' with no explicit connection to the real world back in the PC-98 days. When it moved to Windows it was redesigned to have the real world outside of it, but the explanation for how this worked came later. The Magic Goes Away was the explanation ZUN ended up using.

Besides, guessing at the author's intent doesn't belong in the trope list.

And you're saying that Gensoukyou wasn't created as a refuge for fantasy? Where did you here that?

You reverted my edit with:

"I know what you're reasoning is, it's just backwards. ZUN created Gensoukyou before it's backstory. The Magic Goes Away is used to justify Gensoukyou existing, not the other way around. And this detail is largely irrelevant, and definitely shouldn't replace an actual explanation of how the trope is used."

In response to that and your comment here ...

You're completely misreading what I'm saying, but that's fine. You want to croon about how "wrong" I am, despite the fact I never said, implied, nor wrote in my edit that Gensokyo was not designed as a refuge for youkai. What I wrote was that ZUN is using Gensokyo as a justification for the trope from a real world perspective. And I am not wrong on that.

Go look up the concept behind a Ret Con, and while you're at it, look up Revision as well. It's entirely possible for authors to use pre-existing elements of their own setting in order to explain or provide depth to something later on. It's entirely possible, as well, for authors to retroactively include details and justifications in their settings without contradicting or overwriting established events.

I've reverted your edit again, seeing as it's clear that you want to push the same ideas you defended earlier.

What? How is putting in the in-universe explanation pushing ideas? Unless he said that's what he did in an interview, you're the one insisting on having your speculation be accepted as fact.

Uh, no. It's the other way around, Hylarn. You're the one insisting on having your speculation be accepted as fact, as you have done recently:

"A major part of the backstory. A barrier was set up around Gensoukyou to have at least one area where magic could survive, at the cost of cutting it off from the rest of the world."

You keep insisting that the trope is employed in Touhou as if magic everywhere else has vanished and Gensokyo is the last refuge of magic entirely—in other words, you're pushing the exact same opinions you held in defense of all those Fanon theories earlier.

But you're wrong from the get-go. For one thing, Touhou's setting includes other magical beings and locations outside of Gensokyo which make it clear that magic in the Touhou universe isn't dead (ref: the Lunar Capital, for one). And, again, if Gensokyo really was the last refuge for magic and no magical creature could function outside it, then there wouldn't be canon statements mentioning that humans from the outside are kidnapped by youkai (which, again, I had linked to in the prior discussion).

Furthermore, you've contradicted yourself; you've just said that ZUN would need to have stated Gensokyo's use as a justification in an interview, while claiming earlier that ZUN retroactively made Gensokyo into the effect of the magic going away. Yet you think retroactive continuity or revisions precludes Gensokyo being used as a "justification" from a real world perspective.

A Revision or Ret Con intended to turn a setting, event, or character into a "justification" for the lack of something in the real world is a valid method of playing with a trope. Tropes Are Tools; don't forget that.

I'm trying to have the entry state that magic started disappearing about 100 years ago, and the barrier was set up around Gensoukyou to keep magic within it. The big argument we had last time was over the nature of the barrier, not these facts, which you appeared to agree to be accurate.

What you keep putting in is speculation on the author's intent. Given that, as far as I know, ZUN hasn't said anything about this one way or the other, it seems best to leave it out.

And does the disappearance of magic need justification, considering that it never existed?

"And does the disappearance of magic need justification, considering that it never existed?"

You're still not getting it, and I suspect you're trying not to.

"I'm trying to have the entry state that magic started disappearing about 100 years ago, and the barrier was set up around Gensoukyou to keep magic within it. The big argument we had last time was over the nature of the barrier, not these facts, which you appeared to agree to be accurate."

Except that we never once did discuss your claim that magic vanished from the Touhou world. In fact, one of the very first things I said was:

From reading the various Touhou stuff, it seems more to me that Gensokyo is an attempt by ZUN to "plausibly" explain why the magic went away in Real Life, rather than being created because the magic went away. Yet a lot of fans seem to take it the latter way rather than the former.

The more I read from official Touhou sources, the more this became apparent. The problem for youkai wasn't a disappearance of magic, but that humans were becoming more empirical and more informed as a whole. What is clear is that the youkai created Gensokyo as a way to continue their way of life as rulers of the "night." Whether or not their very existence hinges upon it falls within the realm of fanon theories.

The same is true for magic. What you claim are facts are not facts at all, but your personal fanon theories. Magic exists elsewhere in the Touhou theme, not just in Gensokyo, and as stated from sources like Perfect Cherry Blossom, youkai can still leave Gensokyo by way of their magical powers, mostly for kidnapping humans.

What's going on here is that Gensokyo is acting as something along these tropes: Masquerade and Plausible Deniability. That's what I keep trying to tell you.

Magic isn't dead in the Touhou universe, but to humans it appears to have gone away. That many youkai now live within Gensokyo is the reason magic appears to have went away, hence the Justification—the Plausible Deniability, where most of Touhou's events take place in a world sealed off from our own and yet its inhabitants can still affect it if they wish. The world of Touhou is a sort of masquerade where Gensokyo acts as a vehicle for Plausible Deniability.

Now that I've been able to locate the relevant tropes, do you understand where I'm coming from?

While I suppose you can read the events this way, this is a very specific interpretation, and I don't think it's the intended one. For one thing, the Youkai in PCB that's known to leave Gensoukyou is Yukari, who is both very powerful and has abilities that make doing such a thing easy.

Look, I just want the entry to state the known facts. What you keep putting up is poorly written and very debateable. I think what I have up now (unless you changed it while I was writing this) is fair objective, and shouldn't have too much you disagree with. Would you please leave it?

And once again you're at it with the same old circular tripe.

"While considerably more comprehensible than the previous ones, it's shows all the the problems in your reasoning. Yukari spending time in the outside world is a big deal, and Akyuu notes that the youkai never try to leave."

"While I suppose you can read the events this way, this is a very specific interpretation, and I don't think it's the intended one."

This coming from you, a guy who thinks the Unreliable Expositor Akyuu is the Word Of God?

"For one thing, the Youkai in PCB that's known to leave Gensoukyou is Yukari [...]"

Uh, no. Restatement from the PCB manual:

"However, youkai eat humans and natural humans are favoured as delicacies. Teams of cooks regularly venture beyond the barrier to hunt humans. They apply many methods to conceal their existence from humans of the outer world; accidents and people who run away from home... There are too many humans today for anyone to notice when a few go missing."

Yukari might be seen as amply endowed by fans, but I don't think she counts as entire teams of youkai. Sorry.

"Look, I just want the entry to state the known facts."

Hey, so do I! If you'd stop thinking Akyuu's entries trump everything else ever said and written in Touhou, we wouldn't be having this problem.

"What you keep putting up is poorly written and very debateable."

Poorly written, huh? Debatable, I suppose, only to a person who isn't willing to admit that Akyuu is not a reliable source of canon, considering her constant speculation.

"I think what I have up now (unless you changed it while I was writing this) is fair objective, and shouldn't have too much you disagree with. Would you please leave it?"

Considering that you stubbornly removed what I had written even after identifying the relevant tropes, and claimed that there are "problems in my reasoning?" No thanks. I want the article to state the facts, and the facts don't agree with your opinions. However, I have no problem with the article taking note of popular fanon concepts, as long as they are noted to be fanon.

Time and again, though, you've demonstrated that you want your fanon taken as fact; your specific interpretations of Akyuu's speculation, compared to actual canon statements and happenings elsewhere in the series.

Um. I hate to barge in on a flamefest without an appropriate means of protection, but this is a single entry for a single trope on a single page. This seems kind of like it's getting a little personal, and, well, aren't we here to have fun rather than war with one another?

Anyway, I won't add this to the page yet, but looking between the two of you, may I suggest a middle ground? Figuring out ZUN's intent without actually asking him seems, er... a bit counterproductive.

• The Magic Goes Away: There are various interpretations of this, ranging from "Magic has disappeared from the world at large, and Gensokyu is one of the few remaining homes for it." to "It's an elaborate Masquerade which allows creatures of magic to exist without being bothered". Your Mileage May Vary.

That's a pretty good compromise, Theogrin. I'll go for that. Like I said, I've no objections for things being written that are noted as Fanon.

It could work, though I've never seen anyone else hold the masquerade position, and compromising the entry for one person kind of irritates me.

Look at it this way: the fact that you've needed to argue it to this degree in the first place means that the facts aren't as obviously clear-cut as they seem to you. Call it a compromise for ZUN's love of vagueness.

Hylam: I'm just trying to still this edit war and the related barbeque. If you're okay with the entry for TMGA, I'll toss it on the page.

Already changed, just find having to do so irritating. And it's HylaRN

Sorry, these fonts make it hard to distinguish between a lowercase M and a lowercase RN.

Also, thanks for the post... though you've altered the wording somewhat.

I took care of that; put in the version as you worded it, Theogrin.

Somewhat amusing/frustrating: I'd put up a forum thread about this around an hour earlier.

I thought the altered version flowed better.

That's what fanon means. Things that aren't canon, but are treated by the fans as if they are.

And I'd really argue about that series being closer to canon than normal fanon. Canon Reimu may not be as much of a bitch as fanon makes out, but she's in no way the saint of that series. Cage in Lunatic Runagate, Inaba, Perfect Memento, and Bohemian Archive all more or less agree that Kaguya really is a lazy NEET.

Hm. Guess I need to read more :/

I had, at one point, wanted to move the character tropes to a "general" section on the character page, but got veto'd on account of "the characters page being long enough as it is".

I suppose there are enough gameplay tropes (Beam Spam, The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard, etc.) to make a decent sized list, if you wanted to pull them out. I'm not immediately opposed to the idea.

...That's a terrible reason to change the name. Few people know about Gakutensoku, and fewer still care. That said, it should be Hisoutensoku anyway, since we don't use fan nicknames for anything else.

Hisoutensoku happens to be an exception because it's the only Touhou game without an English secondary title, or a title than can be transliterated into English like Double Spoiler.

...you made almost the exact same post last month. It's, like, three posts up. No one responded negatively to it, so chances are that no one has a problem with it. So, like I said before, if you have a plan for splitting off the gameplay tropes, do it.

That's a somewhat odd way to split it. A lot of the character and backstory tropes are still things that appear in the games themselves. I'd think it'd make more sense to split off the fandom tropes.

Whoops, didn't see it. I forgot about it.

The wiki seems to be going with 'Fairy Wars', so I guess we'll use that.

... playing pool?

I think whoever created the /Music page didn't realize the purpose of the page type (as you say, it's for music-related works that already have a /Main page with the same name). It's kind of too late now to do anything about it, although I noticed that someone just replaced whatever text was there with a tink to the CMoA page.

Cutlisted.

As long as we're axing unnecessary subpages, I think troper tales should go - the one paragraph there can easily move to the memes subpage. Same goes for the trivia page, unless someone plans to actually put something there.

There was something on the trivia page, though it probably belonged more in synopsis or recap. Then someone blanked it.

Pages, as in one for each? Isn't that a bit excessive? Even if you lump all of them in one subpage, between the characters, music, memes, fetishes, fanfics, subjectives and so on this article is already very fragmented as it is. The main page was already soft split once, so making a new category for related works might be appropriate.

I personally think a canon vs fanon soft split will be a better idea, as they have far less overlap than in most franchises I've seen.

Anyway, if you're serious about this, you should definitely make a forum topic and a crowner for this before taking any action, as not many people bother to look up these discussions regularly.

...and Warhammer 40000 materials isn't excessive? Anyway, I was only talking about official non-game materials (basically the ones in the All There In The Manual list), so only around 10 pages...I hope...and each games normally doesn't have that much materials for a single page, so...

Warhammer 40000 isn't excessive, it's insane. Touhou is nowhere near as monumental a franchise, unless you count fan materials, which I don't.

Most of the related works don't really have that much in the way of plot or tropes that aren't already exhibited in the main series, which is way some of them are only mentioned in All There In The Manual. I don't really see how you intend to fill a whole page for a one-shot manga or a collection of commentaries for spell cards.

But like I said discussing such changes here is fairly pointless. If you feel the article has grown too large, take it to the Trope Repair Shop (or at least that's where I assume you need to take it, I only started using the forums recently, so I could be wrong).

The thing is, the way the prose ones are structured, they tropes used fall under a specific character. The manga are a bit more varied, but so far they've largely failed to use tropes distinct from the games. Unless Wild and Horned Hermit turns out to do something unusual, this'd be pointless.

And I've always felt that doing splits in the TRS should only be done if the discussion pages fail.

As to examples from Fanworks, I'm leaning very strongly toward "no".

The problem is, though, if you slash Fanworks and slash the "Sakuya is going to die one day because she refuses immortality and you're going to have at least one very sad little-girl vampire and a very sad Chinese gatekeeper if you ship that way"... you kind of slash the entire Tear Jerker page, because there's really not much THERE in Touhou, is there...? (Obviously, I've never bothered to read the page to see what people have come up with, but I can't think of a whole lot of canonical examples, off the top of my head.)

Well, Mokou, Yuyuko and the Prismrivers do have kind of sad backstories, for those who did bother to look them up in the manual. Failing that I have no problem cutlisting the page, though that would be like the third now.

Well, that's three entries (and five characters out of 100+)... You might be able to include Byakuren if you're including Mokou (since the tragedy of Mokou's backstory is, to a certain point, her own fault), but you're still not going to have enough canon entries to devote an entire page to it (and, again, in the 100+ characters, ZUN has only created five or six that would have a Tear Jerker entry, so we're not exactly rushing to add more in the future).

So, if we're not including fanworks or hypothetical tear-jerkers, the page isn't really serving any purpose.

Made a single Tear Jerker entry in the YMMV and cutlisted the page. And today's lesson is: Never make a subpage without first checking if the examples actually fit.

Edit: And it's gone. Cut masters work fast.

Note: it was not me

Anyway, it's everywhere else that's wrong. Using the romanization scheme that all of the other accepted names do, it should indeed be Gensoukyou. There's been something of a movement to correct it

It's a far uglier word, however.

And the most beautiful word should win. /Danmaku-word combat

Either way, I find it silly. We've used the 'soak for ages, no need to change it now. It only confuses. Not everything needs to be romanticized.

Before you ask, no, I ain't gunna fuck with the wiki, I'm just saying my bit.

It might be just because I have an account at Danbooru, but I see notes hovering over the text that provides translations of them. Hover your cursor over the note to see the translation (or what it otherwise has to say).

The corridors appear endless when they arrive at Eientei itself, but THAT is attributed to a trap laid by Reisen's madness/mindwave powers, not because of the interior actually being larger or, again, Kaguya.

So, yeah, the trope may not apply.