/jp/ - Otaku Culture

[Anonymous No.]

I believe the Touhou games are an attempt by ZUN (maybe with some sort of influence from something or someone else) to try and restore faith in the supernatural, so that someday, Gensokyo's inhabitants can once again walk among us.

Of course, this is probably going to be a Lovecraftian scheme, with all us faggots believing that it'll be awesome for youkai to return to the world, only to be devoured by the millions.

[Anonymous No.]

Is that meant to be ZUN in the picture? He looks older than that hag next to him. That’s insulting, whoever drew this must be an idolshitter.

[Anonymous No.]

>>20539265
Maybe it's done to ensure everybody sees the resemblance, but artists do overemphasize ZUN's facial features. It makes him look older and weathered.

[Anonymous No.]

[Anonymous No.]

>>20540512
What is going on here?

[Anonymous No.]

[Anonymous No.]

This is now a ZUN thread.

[Anonymous No.]

[Anonymous No.]

>>20536026
The way folklore tends to work is tinged with otherness, for lack of a better word. They're not human things, they're prone to their own whims and the appeal is the sense of sharing the world with something unknown and mysterious. In old stories winning a fairy wife or piles of wealth is as common as getting murdered horribly. But the point is, it is a more interesting existence than a predetermined monotheistic world where your life is only a trial. Gonna quote Yeats, from I think Celtic Twilight:
>the imagination of the people dwells rather upon the fantastic and capricious, and fantasy and caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life were they to unite them either with evil or with good.
The kind of pessimism the modern world holds stems from the feeling there's no more mystery, in my opinion anyway. Too much information is hideous for the human spirit. Space exploration filled the void for some years, but the difficulty of it somewhat crushed those dreams.
I do think ZUN just wants to make fun games, music, and characters, but I also think he shares some of those sentiments, and they seep into his work. It's more so the faith of the fans that has the potential to make Gensokyo real

[Anonymous No.]

Congrats you managed to made a point that people were making since the start of Touhou. Also ZUN's philosophy is pretty simple.
"The easiest way to feel romance in your everyday life is to live in a fantasy world. And that is surprisingly easy to do. Just read a fantasy novel."
Similar to Nietzsche just use your skills and imagination to live in the fantasy world.

[Anonymous No.]

>>20540716
This idea is basically hyperstition, which predates Touhou.
http://merliquify.com/blog/articles/hyperstition/

[Anonymous No.]

>>20540759
Well, yeah. ZUN is just a current creator that expand this mindset.

[Anonymous No.]

/jp/ is fast right now.

[Anonymous No.]

[Anonymous No.]

[Anonymous No.]

>>20536026
I don't think the inhabitants of Gensokyo would want to return to the outside world. It's not that hard for them to restore faith in the supernatural if they really wanted, Yukari could just drop a train on a few innocent people in open daylight. But they know that would almost certainly result in their complete annihilation at the hands of humanity.

If Touhou is a scheme at anything, it's convincing idiots that are youkai are worth keeping around. Which, even then, seems to be diminishing considering how much ZUN is turning against the idea of Gensokyo as a paradise for humans with every new revelation/retcon.

[Anonymous No.]

>>20548822
>it's convincing idiots that are youkai are worth keeping around
What?

[Anonymous No.]

>>20540663
>The way folklore tends to work is tinged with otherness, for lack of a better word. They're not human things, they're prone to their own whims and the appeal is the sense of sharing the world with something unknown and mysterious. In old stories winning a fairy wife or piles of wealth is as common as getting murdered horribly.
I've heard arguments like this time and time again. Yet, despite having spend the last few months reading fairy tales I can find no evidence for this. There is nothing otherworldly about folklore or the supernatural creatures that inhabit them. If anything, they are incredibly simple in their nature. The creatures filling a narrative roll that then also utterly defines them. The monster that blocks the heroes path has no other purpose, meaning, or place in the world than to be a obstacle. The supernatural guide that aids the hero has no other purpose, meaning, or place in the world than to be a obstacle. And the fairy wife has no other has no other purpose, meaning, or place in the world than to be a trophy wife.

The human characters in fairy tales are basically the same, expect they tend to have understandable motives. Most supernatural creatures have no motive whatsoever, they just do what the plot needs them to do. The only reason that feels otherworldly to a modern audience is because people just don't write stories like that anymore. The brilliance of Touhou is the way it deals with that fake otherworldliness by making it a key plot point that the nature and survival of youkai is tied to their actions. Youkai do weird shit because they would die if they don't act like they are supposed to. In essence, it's giving them a understandable motive without making their behavior any less weird.

That's also why I don't agree with your assessment that Touhou is about those sentiments. If anything, it's more a deconstruction of those kinds of sentiments. It's both a fond look back on a time when people could still enjoy stories in such a way, and also a acknowledgement that we should move past such a mentality. People have died because of folklore, a lot of people in fact. Much like how countless people are murdered in Gensokyo at the hands of what are essentially sapient memes. Yet, there is also a chance that youkai will change and outgrow their own nature. But only if people start to view youkai as more than mere obstacles or aid, but as complex entities in their own right. Much like how the only way folklore creatures can, and for the most part have, survived in the modern world is by becoming more complex as well.

[Anonymous No.]

>>20548884
*it's convincing idiots that youkai are worth keeping around

[Anonymous No.]

>>20540663
>The way folklore tends to work is tinged with otherness, for lack of a better word. They're not human things, they're prone to their own whims and the appeal is the sense of sharing the world with something unknown and mysterious. In old stories winning a fairy wife or piles of wealth is as common as getting murdered horribly.
I've heard arguments like this time and time again. Yet, despite having spend the last few months reading fairy tales I can find no evidence for this. There is nothing otherworldly about folklore or the supernatural creatures that inhabit them. If anything, they are incredibly simple in their nature. The creatures filling a narrative roll that then also utterly defines them. The monster that blocks the heroes path has no other purpose, meaning, or place in the world than to be a obstacle. The supernatural guide that aids the hero has no other purpose, meaning, or place in the world than to be a obstacle. And the fairy wife has no other purpose, meaning, or place in the world than to be a trophy wife.

The human characters in fairy tales are basically the same, expect they tend to have understandable motives. Most supernatural creatures have no motive whatsoever, they just do what the plot needs them to do. The only reason that feels otherworldly to a modern audience is because people just don't write stories like that anymore. The brilliance of Touhou is the way it deals with that fake otherworldliness by making it a key plot point that the nature and survival of youkai is tied to their actions. Youkai do weird shit because they would die if they don't act like they are supposed to. In essence, it's giving them a understandable motive without making their behavior any less weird.

That's also why I don't agree with your assessment that Touhou is about those sentiments. If anything, it's more a deconstruction of those kinds of sentiments. It's both a fond look back on a time when people could still enjoy stories in such a way, and also a acknowledgement that we should move past such a mentality. People have died because of folklore, a lot of people in fact. Much like how countless people are murdered in Gensokyo at the hands of what are essentially sapient memes. Yet, there is also a chance that youkai will change and outgrow their own nature. But only if people start to view youkai as more than mere obstacles or aid, but as complex entities in their own right. Much like how the only way folklore creatures can, and for the most part have, survived in the modern world is by becoming more complex as well.

[Anonymous No.]

>>20549014
I'm not exactly talking about fairy tales, more like folk belief. It's a little pedantic because one stems from the other, but I believe something gets lost when it's catalogued and written down, instead of a oral retelling or vague memetic knowledge nobody knows the source or origin of. This means there is no plot when it's a true belief, there may be an explanation of why a particular place or action holds power, but it's an ongoing phenomenon. It becomes a fairy tale once the belief has already died.
It isn't about enjoying stories or plotlines, it's about stories which are used as examples to outline the rules of the world. If the rules are no longer in place, they become the toothless fairy tales you read in anthologies. ZUN is giving character to these rules, which is a lot of fun, but it also noticeably strains the setting when the plot has to move.

[Anonymous No.]

>>20548114
>femzun
No, no. You’ve got it all wrong. ZUN is actually a female character, this picture shows the real deal. Ota Junya is just a really dedicated brohu.

[Anonymous No.]

>>20549069
"Sapient memes" is what I'll call youkai and similar faith-dependent creatures from now on.

It seems that folklore beings were born as a way to explain natural phenomena. The human brain evolved to think about other humans, your allies and enemies, because it was key to survival and reproduction. It naturally turned to this mode of thinking when it first started to reason about nature. Supernatural creatures didn't need comprehensible motives because their very purpose was to explain the incomprehensible. Over time they congealed into regionally known types. Each type had commonplace features, traits and behaviors and connections to certain phenomena. In the minds of people who sincerely believed in these creatures they had a place in the world and a purpose. The consistency of the types suggested the creatures had an inner life, even if it was unknown and unknowable.

Fairy tales basically echo these commonplace features. How each type acts in different fairy tales is relatively consistent and comes from how it was believed to act. Their motives may be incomprehensible, but what creature past storytellers chose to place in what role is not arbitrary.

>>20549221
>It becomes a fairy tale once the belief has already died.
You make a good point, but I disagree with the quoted sentence. Fairy tales seem to have originated at a time when people still believed in spirits of nature. They were to them more like what urban legends are to us than what fantasy fiction is to us. Even when fairy tales were collected and recorded in Europe apparently people still to some extent believed in fairies, etc.

[Anonymous No.]

>>20549242

[Anonymous No.]

>>20540520
Zun (Burn victim)

[Anonymous No.]

>>20549221
I suppose I can understand what you mean when you talk about the difference between folklore and fairy tales. But I think you might be overestimating the difference. Not every folklore story was told with the believe that it really happened. While people did believe in supernatural phenomenon back then, they also weren't stupid.

Most of the stories that were more about outlying the rules of the world were more mythological in nature. It's the difference between classical mythology, and a bunch of weird stories drunk greek peasants told themselves to pass the time.

>ZUN is giving character to these rules, which is a lot of fun, but it also noticeably strains the setting when the plot has to move.
I suppose. Even if, like I said, I tend to feel that by making those rules part of the plot it actually does allow a certain degree of natural movement.

[Anonymous No.]

>>20549398
A lot of supernatural creatures are indeed a way to explain natural phenomena. Which is, in it's own way, another example of fake otherworldliness. As for them having a inner life and a place in the world outside of explaining a natural phenomena, I feel that's usually more the case for mythology than folklore. Which, like all religion, is all about trying to make sense of the world and create some kind of grand historical supernatural narrative. In folklore it really does feel like they exist to explain a phenomenon, without really having a reason for doing what they do expect that people believe it's what they do.

>How each type acts in different fairy tales is relatively consistent and comes from how it was believed to act.
I don't really find that accurate. Most fairy tales have widely different rules for the exact same supernatural creatures. Fairies for instance can be anything from bening supernatural waifus to completely evil demons, without any serious attempt being made to connect the two different versions. Even japanese fairy tales, which did often pull from a more unified and consistent stable of youkai characters, could be pretty inconsistent at times when it came to depictions of the supernatural.

>Their motives may be incomprehensible, but what creature past storytellers chose to place in what role is not arbitrary.
This I do somewhat agree with. But only insofar that those creatures can often form a convenient shorthand, in the same way people often use public domain characters nowadays as a convenient shorthand. Nobody needs to be explained who Dracula or Frankenstein is, just like how nobody had to be explained what a Fairy or a Kitsune is.

[Anonymous No.]

I think I might have a good way of explaining the difference between mythology, folklore, fairy tales, folk tales, modernity, and Touhou:

>Folklore.
"Don't go into the woods alone, fairies dwell there."

>Folktale.
"Listen to this story about why you shouldn't go into the woods alone."

>Mythology.
"This is why there are fairies in that wood."

>Fairy tales.
"This is a story about woods with fairies in them."

>Modernity.
"There are no fairies in that wood, but it is still dangerous enough that you shouldn't travel alone through it."

>Touhou.
"There used to be fairies in that wood. They abducted people because of their nature, nowadays they play pranks on cattle. Also their leader is a Jojo's bizarre adventure reference."

[Anonymous No.]

I think I might have a good way of explaining the difference between folklore, folktales, mythology, fairy tales, modernity, and Touhou:

>Folklore.
"Don't go into the woods alone, fairies dwell there."

>Folktale.
"Listen to this story about why you shouldn't go into the woods alone."

>Mythology.
"This is why there are fairies in that wood."

>Fairy tales.
"This is a story about woods with fairies in them."

>Modernity.
"There are no fairies in that wood, but it is still dangerous enough that you shouldn't travel alone through it."

>Touhou.
"There used to be fairies in that wood. They abducted people because of their nature, nowadays they play pranks on cattle. Also their queen is a Jojo's bizarre adventure reference."

[Anonymous No.]

>>20551633
>Also their queen is a Jojo's bizarre adventure reference."

[Anonymous No.]

>>20551633
thanks teacher

[Anonymous No.]

>>20558424
what?

[Anonymous No.]

>>20551633
Are you a scientician?

[Anonymous No.]

>>20566242
No. Just bored.