Touhou and its impact on me
Ah Touhou... A decades lasting series beloved by many. As I'm sure you're all aware, I'm a huge Touhou fan. Almost all of my work has to do with Touhou in some form or another. My games? Touhou. My art? Touhou. My music? Touhou. This very site you're reading this post on? Touhou, indeed! It's all Touhou here. I couldn't imagine my life without Touhou. Where would I even be? Maybe outside, with all the wildlife. That'd be awful, I wouldn't survive!
Now, how did we get here? And why am I only interested in Touhou and nothing else? You'll find that out here!
So. 2012. The year when the world was going to end, and when I was a wee 4 year old lad who was handed an iPad. Yeah, I was iPad kid, before it was the cool thing to be. My sisters were huge into Touhou, and they showed me lots and lots of Touhou fanworks. Did I understand any of it? Nope! But I did eye a certain character alot. Flandre Scarlet. with her neat little crystaline wings, I found her quite interesting!
And that was it really. Didn't do a whole lot, because I was too stupid to know anything else to appreciate it. I do remember asking random kids in my Kindergarten class if they knew what Touhou is in like 2013...
"Do you know what Touhou is?"I have no idea why child me was even doing that, because I knew nothing. I also don't know how they responded other than giving me a weird look. I think.
"what?"
"It's Japan."
Anyways, flash forward to 2020. I was a huge Eclipsis[1] player. There was A LOT of people copying the same Flandre outfit, and due to that, I remembered the existence of the Bad Apple PVs, and I went to watch it. I am flooded back with memories of (not phantasm) my sister's random Touhou content, but also nostalgia. Nostalgia for something I never really experienced. And the exact moment I saw the garbage fire effects on the scene with Mokou, I knew I had to get into it.
I uh, don't exactly remembered what happened after. What I do remember is annoying my random Roblox friend groups with Touhou memes and art. Then I joined a certain large Touhou Discord server, which really just made me love Touhou even more, interacting with the community and whatnot. I even found love! From Touhou! How crazy is that?
Anyway, that's how I discovered Touhou. Now you're probably asking "Yeah that's cool and all, but why aren't you into any other community??"
Hm. I guess it's because nothing else that I know of has a community dominated by fanworks like Touhou, while still being large and known. Actually, now that I think of it, I like Len'en aswell but that's still under the Touhou umbrella. Really though, nothing really captures my interest, outside of touhou.
Either way, I'm deep in. Life, is touhou as I say. Because it truly is for me. And I honestly couldn't be happier that I ever discovered it.
[1] A certain Roblox game. Yes, I used to play Roblox, but not anymore, I've outgrown it.