When you suffer defeat....

[cujo2671]

At the hands of the Church of Touhou, what left is there for you to do, but to give yourself up to spread the cause and the word? What happens when you resist so much to initiate yourself 100% to Touhou fandom that you end up destroying the barrier that keeps you from fully converting?

Let me explain what I mean by this. You see, I was just aimlessly browsing and such, checking on forum posts/Facebook posts/etc, and I somehow stumble upon tracks from IaMP. And then to my chagrin and curiosity, I stumble upon Alice's theme. By accident. Or maybe by fate.

That was the final straw that converted me to Touhou-ism. You see, Alice's Day theme in IaMP was the VERY first Touhou song I had ever heard. At the time, I had no clue what it was. The mystery of what this was drove me to discover more about what I saw. That led to me finding Defiant of Shrine Maiden, then after that it died down until I discovered Chen's Gensokyo Ondo, which is what sparked the desire to at least consider Touhou as a possible niche for me. After that, I proceeded down many paths, which led to encounters with Youmu (which is how I ended up here), then Momiji (which happened after I got here), then Komachi (after something that went astray with the whole Momiji encounter, no thanks to Aya), and then..... nostalgia brings me back to Alice.


Case in point, I am now a Touhou addict. This decision is final.


A question though: Have you ever had someone resist the lure of Touhou for as long as I have, and as hard as I have, only to have them convert through some silly, stupid, or otherwise aloof reason?

[Nyarly]

Well, I knew about Touhou since quite a while, but never had really much interest until last year. I'm not exactly sure, but I think what got me into it were videos on Youtube. Not gameplay videos, but things like music videos. Actually, I think it was mostly "Marisa stole the precious thing", which I don't even like anymore (and I'm not even sure what I liked about that in the first place). To a lesser extent, it was also "Artificial Children", but I knew that one through a Yume Nikki MAD (I learned that the original is based shortly after).

Anyway, shortly afterwards, I got kind of hooked and started looking for Touhou pictures. That I often visited (well, I still do) Danbooru helped. Although it wasn't until next year (actually a few months ago), that I really became a fan.

[AJS]

I didn't really resist Touhou when I started learning about it.  I was just hopelessly oblivious, until I was one day enlightened by a Youtube comment stating the source of all the Touhou memes and remixes I had witnessed--the Touhou Project series of games itself.

But up until that point, I was oblivious as to the true nature of what Touhou was, so I didn't "convert" right away.

Spoiler:

I kid you not, due to what I had been exposed to, for a while, the only thing I knew/thought was that "Cirno's Perfect Math Class" was the name of some Japanese version of "Brain Age", with Cirno as the host.  I thought the titular video was the game's intro.  *shoots self over how stupid I was back then*

[Drake]

if anything i'm surprised when people already have heard of touhou and aren't actively avoiding it

[iK]

It's a hell of a drug.  I got into it through the music as well, I can't recall the first track I heard but it was probably something like U.N. Owen or Love Coloured Master Spark or something else extremely popular to that effect. I actually came into it blind, "What is this 'Toe-Hoos' they speak of?" So I looked up the series on TVTropes, also a hell of a drug, and thought "Oh neat, but I suck at STG's." Then I found out about IaMP some time later and I think because of "loldrunkenloli" I got more into it. It wasn't until like 2008'ish though that I knew enough characters to name 10 off the top of my head, and even then couldn't remember their last names, so I couldn't even look them up much on Danbooru. "Ffff, Marisa uhh Kirimise or something I think."  The first of the actual shooters I played was PoFV andI really liked Cirno's ted baxterism. Shortly afterward I found out about Cirno's Perfect Math Class and Ice Sign "Icicle Fall Easy," and came to love the little idiot. That took me to EoSD and then the rest of the games, which I believe at the time I would officially designate myself a fan went up to 11 with 12 and 12.3 coming out under my nose shortly after. Since then I've been following the games fervently, but only recently found out about the greater spectrum of the Fandom here and on the ir chat. So then I joined. And now I'm here typing this up. Full circle.


I got a friend of mine who's into fighters to start playing Soku and I think I'm slowly converting him. My ex has only one thing to say about Touhou- regarding Yukkuris- something along the lines of "Ew yeah I don't like those things."

[KLH]

Meh... I like Touhou, but haven't "suffered defeat" as described yet, and probably won't, mostly because of the parts of the fanbase that are exceptionally horrible.

I'm always happy when I encounter Touhou material or references in what I'm dealing with, but it is not the centric interest of my life.
Except for the occasional remix or animation, I don't actively seek Touhou-related material outside of YTPMVs/MADs.

I have had the privilege of meeting a few people who know about and play the games, and I've also tried to introduce the games to a few other people, but both were for the sake of the gameplay rather than any of the canon or fan material.

However, in the beginning I never really resisted against learning about Touhou; I was actually quite curious about it.

if anything i'm surprised when people already have heard of touhou and aren't actively avoiding it

Not sure why you would say this, but trying to avoid Touhou on the Internet (and especially YouTube) is like trying to avoid Team Fortress 2, and more recently, My Little Pony.
You just can't.
In fact, this is how I started learning about both Touhou and Team Fortress 2.

[iK]

I haven't seen much My Little Pony as a community personally. Only FiM related things being crossed into other fandoms. "Brony" culture is an entirely different subject and unrelated to the otherwise good show. I also don't see the logic of bringing up "Mostly because of parts of the fanbase that are horrible," while simultaneously and obstinately making it known you relish in the Team Fortress community, which has it's own sizable chunk of awful fanbase. Every fandom has elitists, pricks, trolls, rookies, and dead parrots who try way too hard to be a part of the community, and if that is what you mean by "Parts of the fanbase that are exceptionally horrible," then I'm sorry to say that you will never find a fanbase of any media that will satisfy you.

That being said, again My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a legitimately good show, and Team Fortress a better-than-most FPS, and I have nothing but respect for you as a person. It's the intolerance and willful ignorance I don't like.

[LeviLamprey]

>read nuzlockes of Touhoumon
>played touhoumon
>read touhou wiki for days
>set out on grand mission to acquire all the games, ugh
>addicted to Touhou
>yep
>also Touhou is irresistible

[Bias Bus]

I'm not even sure. When I first got into Touhou I didn't really do much with it since, I didn't know squat about it beyond the characters I looked up/found on wikipedia. After that, I sorta just...didn't do anything until I joined this forum and even then I don't remember doing anything with Touhou until around several years back.

Then again, this is all based on how I usually don't really get involved with anything until I've grown comfortable with it, or have grown used to it to a degree. So, there's that.

[KLH]

I haven't seen much My Little Pony as a community personally. Only FiM related things being crossed into other fandoms. "Brony" culture is an entirely different subject and unrelated to the otherwise good show. I also don't see the logic of bringing up "Mostly because of parts of the fanbase that are horrible," while simultaneously and obstinately making it known you relish in the Team Fortress community, which has it's own sizable chunk of awful fanbase. Every fandom has elitists, pricks, trolls, rookies, and dead parrots who try way too hard to be a part of the community, and if that is what you mean by "Parts of the fanbase that are exceptionally horrible," then I'm sorry to say that you will never find a fanbase of any media that will satisfy you.

That being said, again My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a legitimately good show, and Team Fortress a better-than-most FPS, and I have nothing but respect for you as a person. It's the intolerance and willful ignorance I don't like.

I made my statements in recognition and knowledge of "elitists, pricks, trolls, rookies, and dead parrots" in the Team Fortress 2 fanbase; indeed, they are part of every fanbase, like you said, and are simply part of human society in general.
But these are not what I consider to be "exceptionally horrible".
It is those parts of a fanbase that focus on producing exceptionally vulgar / explicit material and those with biased, overrated opinions about a work.

As for the first part, I (thankfully) don't know of any excessively vulgar fan material for Team Fortress 2. There are some instances of vulgarity, but the ones I've seen are minor and certainly not the focus of the material in question, outside of some silly YTP-style songs and word-splicing. About "intolerance", entertainment focused on unreasonable content is what I do not tolerate.

Now I may have been extremely lucky about the second part, but I have always seen mixed opinions about Team Fortress 2. Some of the most dedicated players and fans will always have a long list of faults to point out in Team Fortress 2, and rightfully so. (e.g. "This game crashes too much", "This update is broken", "This new item is unbalanced", "The game runs so slow")
I have never found in my own or other people's observations of the fanbase any opinion that regards Team Fortress 2 as perfect and faultless.
Such a perception would be hopelessly misguided, as Team Fortress 2 is far from perfect.

About the MLP:FiM fanbase, I don't know much, aside from that there are bronies that do actually "love and tolerate", and those that don't. I'm not into the show, though.

If there is any ignorance I have, it is certainly not willfull.