/jp/ - Otaku Culture

No, Gensokyo (幻想郷) means "land of fantasy"
幻想 (gensou) = fantasy/illusion
郷 (kyo) = country/district/land/place

Touhou is not about escapism, it's about merging great music with juxtaposing themes of orientalism and westernism all under the context of a fantastic danmaku shooter. It's ZUN's passion project, he combined his love of mythology and Japanese wordplay with his aspirations to create video game music and his latent talent as a programmer of SHMUPs. I guess you could call the fanon part of Touhou "escapism", though. All forms of media are escapism. Especially for busy Japanese people who rarely have free time and are under constant stress.

>>19919269
Touhou is about cute girls doing cute things

Dream changing, the memory of a world of illusionary morning mist.
This present world, sitting atop a crumbling foundation of sand.
A fabricated dream's history, telling of an ancient profound world.
In broad daylight, a town sinks.

>>19919413
What did ZUN mean by this?

Rei=zero
Mu=nothingness.

Was ZUN foreshadowing her powers all along?

Gensokyo is just Sanae's delusion.

>>19920282
Reimu is just a bully that keeps denying her imaginary friends.

>>19920151
博麗 霊夢 hakurei reimu
博 (haku) = vastness/benevolence([love for] humanity)/exposition;fair/extensive knowledge/expert/buddhist chant music lyrics/gambler
麗 (rei) = lovely/graceful/resplendent/bright/magnificent/glorious/to rival;to match/to be linked/to mutually benefit from each other as friends/to be separated/goguryeo
博麗 (hakurei) = anything you want it to be as ZUN has never talked about the meaning of it, but it can generally be thought of as "benevolent friend" or "friend of humanity"/"benefactor of humanity", which makes the most sense considering one of the hakurei clan's main job is to protect the humans of gensokyo by exterminating youkai
博麗 is also homophonous with 魄霊, a taoist concept that represents the yin and yang of the human soul (the hakurei clan possesses the legendary yin-yang orb, after all)
additionally, hakurei (はくれい) can just a common name with no meaning
霊夢 (reimu) = a predictive dream, revelation, or enlightening experience
traditionally, 霊夢 also means a vision given from a shinto god or a buddha/bodhisattva/buddhist god
霊 = soul/spirit
夢 = dream/vision
ZUN confirmed that 霊夢 indeed meant enlightening vision in this interview
http://animeiji.jp.land.to/easterndawn/report4.html
so, altogether, hakurei reimu 博麗 霊夢 can mean something like "enlightened with the vision of the benefit of humanity" or "esteemed companion [of humanity] foretold in a predictive dream". basically something like a legendary god-sent champion of humanity.
fun facts:
reimu was spelled 靈夢 instead of 霊夢 in the pc-98 games, the 靈 kanji is a outdated form of 霊 that basically means the same thing (spirit). the parts of 靈 are 玉 (ball, referring to the hakurei yin yang orb), 霝 (rain/soul), and 巫 (female medium/shaman, referring to reimu as a shrine maiden). before it cams to mean spirit/soul/rain, 霝 could have referred to many things like "heart of god", "power of god", etc (this refers to reimu's ability to use the god-given hakurei yin yang orbs, also, the rain could refer to a rain of danmaku or a "rain of god" as the origin of the kanji implies. more about it here: https://okjiten.jp/kanji1219.html
there is an old brewery in japan's kyoto prefecture called ハクレイ酒造 (hakurei brewery). this brewery was established in 1832 and serves a variety of sake, including two named after shuten-doji (suika's inspiration) and ibaraki-doji (kasen's inspiration). coincidence? probably.
there is a breed of expensive peach called 白麗 (hakurei) which was first cultivated in 1996
the 1st century AD text 答劉歆書 (da liuxin shu lit. the epistle to liu xin) by poet yang xiong contains the expression 沈博絶麗 (chen bo ju li/jp:chinpakuzetsurei) that translates to "deep and wide, absolutely beautiful" (it is referring to what any single sentence should strive to be). the saying contains the characters 博 (haku) and 麗 (rei) that make up hakurei.

>>19920946
I should have clarified that I was being flippant, but I do appreciate your insight, anon. Thanks.

Gensokyo is ZUN's magical realm.

>>19920946
Good post. Maybe I should have finally learn moonspeak. Do you have more?

I want to make babies with Reimu

>>19921498
I'd like to see Reimu struggle in danmaku because her tummy is too big.

>>19926853
Bullets would seemingly bend around her and she'll wonder if you're going easy on her because of the baby

>>19926853
her tummy is not big!

>>19919269
Pretty much.
Like most entertaining stuff produced in Japan.

>>19919404
Only correct answer. Now to listen to "Cirno's Perfect Math Class [dubbed]"

>>19919269
Don't say things like that. Let's talk about how cute Reimu is instead!

>>19934714
S-Stop it marisa!
people will get the wrong idea

>>19928464
Yukari is going to put the baby inside Reimu.

>>19941192
Can girls do that?

>>19919269
Nah, more about Eastern identity when being contrasted to an increasingly westernised world. East x West (in that order)

>>19919269
No its mainly about cute girls.

>>19919404
remove the cute girls and suddenly the franchise is dead.

>>19946734
Yukari can. She will gap your sperm into Reimu's eggs.

>>19946734
Yukari has a pretty big cock

>>19919269
it's not healthy

How big is the Human Village and what is it current population count?

>>19967205
It's a big village.

>>19967210
For ReimU

>>19919269
I want to escape to Gensokyo. Thinking back to when I thought about escaping to gensokyo makes me feel nice, it's nostalgic but I still feel that way. I want to go back to that. Thinking about Gensokyo makes me feel nice. I wish I could go there and meet my favorite 2hus and that it would be happy and nice like I imagine. I miss when I came to /jp/ for the first time, that was nice. I wanna learn about Gensokyo again. I want to go to Gensokyo and meet them. That's nice.

>>19961334
>>19961290
citation

>>19967467
Lewd lewd lewd anon. That is a baby ruth bar going into reimu

>>19919380
>latent talent as a programmer of SHMUPs
Compared to Western indie devs he is a kami of C++.

>>19967189
Marche is such a faggot.

>>19920946
>博麗 is also homophonous with 魄霊
Thanks for pointing this out, anon.

>>19961290
Opening a gap inside someone's body is straight-up horror.

>>19970001
A fact which makes Yukari quite pleased

>>19967286
>I miss when I came to /jp/ for the first time, that was nice. I wanna learn about Gensokyo again.
Maybe some day you will find something else like Touhou and relive these feelings. This is probably you best option. If you don't find it within five years, think about creating it.

>>19919269
Isn't Gensokyo just an open air prison?

>>19969916
I know this may be a hard concept for you to understand, but most people on /jp/ don't speak or read Japanese.

>>19970205
What does this have to do with my post?

>>19970217
Your post seemed so redundant and useless that I thought it was sarcasm.

>>19970273
Not at all.

>>19970273
you
i know you

>>19970075
I don't want anything else, I want Touhou and /jp/

>>19970573
同じ河に二度入ることはできない

>>19970670
I can if I try really hard, it'll come again one day maybe. And until I can, I'll just sit and imagine it until it feels good, even if it's only a little bit of how good it felt before. That's good enough for now, right?

>>19970719
No, it really isn't, and you know it. What may work is actively trying to find new things you enjoy related to 2hu. For instance, you could start drawing art or making your own games.

>>19970162
Depends on their socioeconomic status, just like the rest of the world

>>19970719
Get get into mythology, both eastern and western - but don’t do it through modern sources or that’ll kill the fun. Unless there is no primary source available always look for primary sources, if there isn’t just find the oldest means possible you can find. Discovering medieval myths and legends can be fun since I’m a way they all tie together and you get a reference to one completely different myth in a poem about one myth, but you probably would want to look at Japanese legends mainly with other stuff in on the side. Use Touhou as a starting point, and research the references and youkai that ZUN uses to get deeper in Japanese mythology.

>>19976159
When it comes to Japanese mythology is Shii's book worth reading?

>>19970745
>For instance, you could start drawing art
I don’t even just draw badly, I draw even worse then a five year old. My handwriting is shit as well, as I have problems with my hand to eye coordination/finer motor skills can you help me start from the top? Find me something that can help me at my level.

>>19976242
>>>/loomis/

>>19976215
Well sure, the main sources for Japanese mythology are https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kojiki
And https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nihon-shoki (both made in the 700s) if you want a deal like the Norse Eddas. Look here if you are interested https://www.britannica.com/topic/Japanese-mythology..

>>19976288
You probably already know this site if you have any interest in mythology, but I will just leave it here
http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm

Reminder that Shinto is a small splash in the Japanese mythology pool. The vast behemoth that is Buddhism and Chinese culture carry-over far outrank Shinto texts in terms of content.

>>19919269
Speaking of which, how do I make Reimu fall in love with me?

>>19976288
Not him but thank you, I've really been needing to research Japanese mythology for a project of mine and this is a great help

>>19976688
No problem

>>19976623
Be smart, knowledgeable and /fit/, just like with regular women, they're all the same no matter where you go

>>19976623
Money

>>19977273
wrong
be cunning

>>19976623
Be a woman who could handle financial decisions and make her life as easy as possible.

Really, it's that simple.

>>19977273
That's pretty mysoginist, dude. Get with the times.

>>19976623
Have some kind of spiritual connection to money.
>>19977273
Inaccurate advice for regular women and doubly so for Reimu.
>>19977453
Accurate advice for regular women and doubly so for Reimu.

>>19970075
>something else like Touhou
It doesn't exist

>>19981672
It does, but you may not like what it is.

>>19981813
I'm okay with Seihou, but it's been dead for a decade now

>>19981872
That is not the kind of thing I'd bother prefacing with "you may not like it". What I was going to say was - brace yourself - Homestuck. I think it is literally the closest thing there is to Touhou in terms of how its fandom works. Too bad the fandom is terrible and the work itself went to shit.

>>19982084
>>19982084
Chivalric tradition and poetry was basically doujinshi and otaku culture before doujinshi and otaku culture, and in the west, you could say Arthurian legend is still on so there’s that. The more you get into it, the more it reminds you of the whole 2hu schtick- there are even damsel maiden waifus. If you read Don Quixote then it shall again point to you the similarities between it and Otaku culture.

>>19982307
You're making a good point, anon. I read Don Quixote without reading any of the chivalric romances that it parodies, which must be typical for modern readers. Can you recommend some works that preceded it? I'm also interested in Arthurian legend beyond Le Morte d'Arthur.

I'm beginning to think there is actually a division between otaku. There is a type of fan who gravitates towards linear works and a type who likes sprawling mythologies. It is not that the first type is lazy or prefers shorter fiction; he can read very long sagas, but he wants to build a coherent representation of the canon in his head and is annoyed by discrepancies and contradictions in the plot. The second type ENJOYS reading multiple, even conflicting accounts of the same events. He wants to see different takes on the same character, to act as a historian of the fictional world and compare them. The second type is the one who can end up really into the Touhou fandom or the Cthulhu mythos or even Norse mythology.

>>19982424
>I read Don Quixote without reading any of the chivalric romances that it parodies, which must be typical for modern readers.
That's a chilling thought. Do people nowdays really not read old literature?

>>19984785
Most people don't read at all

>>19984924
They at least read when they were kids, right? A childhood without reading imaginative stories would make someone really fucking useless.

>>19984785
I read old books, though mostly nonfiction about history and politics, and philosophy. As far as I can tell, though, even among those interested in older books nobody reads chivalric romances. I have never read one. I don't think I was even supposed to read any at school.

>>19984928
I wish I was a kid again

>>19982424
For Arthuan legend there is stuff like Gaiwan and the Green Knight, Parsifal by Wolfram Von Esenbach, Tristan by Gottfried von Strassburg, Chrétien de Troyes’s cycles, more stuff can be found here:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_based_on_Arthurian_legends

There are things like the Nibelungenlied, a few poems are based on it as well. The saga of didrick of bern has been translated from the Swedish version, the kindle version is the only reasonable priced one though. Legends of the thedrick of great are hard to come by, but if you can are desperate enough like me you can google translate a German version of the little hero book - and it is understandable I would say. https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=3&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://web.archive.org/web/20060719090010/http://www.wissen-im-netz.info:80/literatur/simrock/helden/0301.htm&xid=17259,15700002,15700021,15700124,15700126,15700149,15700186,15700190,15700201,15700214&usg=ALkJrhgpW0q49sdNfUTBTwpw42ccX7KJjQ

Also Charlemagne’s Chanson De Geste, you can find all the tittle on the Wikipedia page. Start with the song of Roland, Orlando Furioso is famous as well but it’s prequel Orlando Innamorato is hard to find outside of a prose rephrasing/abridgment. The translation of the actual Orlando Innamorato is available, but it is £30 and abridged - there is a incomplete translation here:
https://rossignolbooks.wordpress.com for free.

Chaucer wrote some chilvaric stuff, so did Cervantes himself.

Sources for the ring: https://www.laits.utexas.edu/wagner/ringsources/ringsources.html , the Viking sagas are findable on Wikipedia.

>>19985812
Thanks, anon.

>>19985021
Dang.
When I read Don Quixote as a teen I really thought it was funny how it parodied those stypes of stories.

>>19987459
It's funny anyway. You learn a lot about the stories it parodies through what they call "cultural osmosis".

>>19920151

Please don't make me listen again to the end of evangelion OST. My stomach can only withstand so much existential dread fueled acoholism.

>>19920282
>>19920297

It's actually brilliant as a roman's theme.

I want to have a nice dream of Gensokyo forever.

>>19976159
>>19976215

Having "cheated" with my International Relations' master thesis to write basically only about Shinto Theology I must say that the connections Hirata Atsutane did in the Kojiki with the Abrahamist religions is absolutely fascinating. Being somewhat versed into gnostic theology and its totally indirect correlations with buddhism and how all of that both directly and inderectly ended up in essentialist Shinto metaphysic is absolutely fascinating to me. I wish I did theology instead of politology honestly.

>>19976519

>5 yuan/won has been deposited to your bank account

>>19984785

I'd say that the greek classics are still read but they have a completely different atmosphere around them. They always seem to have philosophy inbeded in them or were afterward understood so much through it that you can't really separate them anymore. J.R.R Tolkien supposedly hated them for that.

All fiction and hobbies are inherently escapism, it's escaping from the real world for a while, even if it's taking place or about the real world. here's a question, why do so many of you seem to have a problem with 2hu being escapism? Isn't that a good and positive quality? As>>19921405 said, and further from that, it's magical realm incarnate. Headcanon from here to the moon, even ZUN has his own.
>philosophy bullshit
You can have both CGDCT and philosophical bullshit together, why does this bother some of you? It seems like it might be some sort of contrarian thing, denying that as the main attraction to seem more mature or intellectual, maybe? 2hu is infinite entertainment for the second type of otaku that>>19982424 was talking about, it's top tier escapism, it's soulsborne for the moefag, something we can spend all day and night thinking about and deciphering for ourselves, forming headcanons, figuring things out, etc. It's heaven, maybe even literally for people who plan on going to Gensokyo upon death. Gensokyo: paradise, 10/10 for escapism opportunity

>>19977273
>>19977286
>>19977453
Why do real world women tend to be so dependent and boring (maybe that's not the right word, normal or standardized, maybe?)? All those things that are listed are boring things, material and superficial things, why are real world women like Yuuka, Yukari, Youmo, or even Sanae so rare or hard to find, especially among the current generation (15-25), inb4 >>>/r9k/.

>>19990082

If you think women were ever good at any point in time in any place I have some bad news for you.

>>19990115
There's very good women out there who seem like they might as well be a manga waifu, but they're usually taken or unavailable. Very rare as well. At least 2hu and other waifu simulators exist!

>>19990132

>There's very good women out there who seem like they might as well be a manga waifu

Anon, I...

>>19969890
That's not saying much. ZUN isn't a particularly good programmer but I don't think he's terrible. I feel a lot of problems with some of his games could have been overcome if he didn't set such rigid/short deadlines.

>>19990169
You're telling me you've never met one of those 10/10 (personality, not nessesarily appearance) girls or women who seem like they might as well be a wish fullmillment character in a seinen manga? They definitely exist, and one of the ones I've met, among others, is basically Yuuka in the flesh, really nice, calm, mature, and lovely lady. They're just rare. More evidence that 2hu is escapism.

>>19969890
>kami of C++
That man wrote the first five games in x86 assembly. Fuckin' assembly. I guarantee you 99% of western indie developers will shiver at the sight of that yet he managed to pull it off five (5) times.

>>19990082
It's because Touhou characters tend to act more like old men than women, even if they look cute
They spend their days drinking, flower viewing, wandering through nature, and teasing each other, that's the life of a retired ojii-san

>>19990247
>That man wrote the first five games in x86 assembly
Source?. That sounds amazing

>>19990383
Just open up the .exe of any of the PC98 games in hexdump and look at the first couple of pages. Notice how they're pure data and don't link to any external libraries, a hallmark of any high-level language such as C/C++.
Most early japanese DOS computer games other than visual novels were done in asm.

>>19990228

I think you missed the part where she got creampied by 5 different guys before she was 30. I think it has more to do with the times though. People nontheless just can't restraint themselves from being garbage no matter the context, they'll always find a way to fuck it up.

>>19990272
Women can't do those things as well? Be like that? Keep in mind they are all very up there in years, but there are women in the real world who are no different.
>drinking
>flower viewing
>wandering through nature
>teasing each other
Gensokyo roads take me home, sounds like very good ways to spend the days.

>>19990394
Sexual experience isn't a bad thing, as long as they've had no STDs or pregnancies with it. Is that why slutfags are corrected to "LLS Yuuka with a hairpin"?

>>19990393
>Just open up the .exe of any of the PC98 games
Do you mean the .hdi files?

>>19990394
Why are you assuming the worst? Why do you assume that having 5 partners through the course of 30 years is bad? You seem to be going out of your way to find something wrong with her. Are you that afraid of a relationship that you'll make up something vile out of the other person so you don't have to bother and just dismiss her as yet another whore or yet another basic bitch? To me, it sounds like the problem is you.

>>19990082
Blunt answer: it isn't that you are nonstandard and they're standard, it's that you're a man and they're women. Because of the your DNA and hormones and stuff the things you find interesting are not the same things girls find interesting. There is a reason men so often fall in love with women written my men.

>>19990416
.hdi files are just PC98 hard drive images. Look up DiskEdit for a disk editor that lets you move files to and from the image. Use whatever hex editor you use and enter the matrix that is ZUN's code.
Alternatively, see https://github.com/nmlgc/ReC98 for an explanation on how they're translating the original code into C.

>>19990397
Sure, anyone can, I was just talking about the stereotype.

>>19990446
If you're going by stereotypes then 60% of men are nothing but dogs.

>>19990272
In other words, the essence of /jp/ is wanting to be an old man in a cute girl's body and to hang out with old men in cute girls' bodies? The worst thing is that it sounds exactly right. This is one pill I wasn't ready to swallow.

>>19990412
It depends. The capacity for pair bonding diminishes with the number of relationships. In happens in both women and men, but perhaps faster in women.

>>19990015
Because that's now what escapism means, you dumbdumb.
Illegal drugs can be a form of escapism, it isn't exactly a good and positive quality either.
Not all fiction is designed to escape reality, there are many that try to mirror reality, hence why stuff like literary themes are important to good works of fiction.

Escapism is just fiction designed to make you forget about harsh realities by pandering to shit like powertrippers and haremfags.

>>19990514

There is extensive scientific litterature about how women instantly start becoming garbage the second their first sexual partner isn't their lifelong partner too. The same thing happens to men but in a very diminished way. That whole retarded incels rebelion against thots is actually not that retarded and that's the worst part of this whole mess.

>>19990435
This is a very cool project. Thank you for linking to it.
>From a cursory inspection of their code, these games appear to have not much of an "engine", much less a common one. The gameplay is mainly driven by stage- and boss-specific callback functions hardcoded into the executable, rather than the ECL scripts in the Windows games, which would merely require an alternate VM to interpret them.
Now that is a 2hu-level porting challenge. I hope the team is up to the task.

>>19990435
I see. Thanks anon.

>>19990426

You do realize it means a partner almost every 2 years unless she also fucked in her teenage years right ?

>>19990523
All fiction is an escape from reality, even if it takes place in reality. You forget about your daily life for a bit and focus on something else, all fiction is escapism. You can't help it, and no matter how close you try to mirror reality, it's still an escape from your reality, just different levels and extremes of how far you escape. You sound like you're not a fan of it.

>>19989294
Oh shit, does this mean outsiders find Otaku funny or like a joke?

>>19990573
Probably, we're horny virgins obsessed with cute girls and nerd stuff, so it's likely.

>>19990228
Look here boy, every fucking guy meets a girl whom he says is a 10/10 anime waifu in real life and the greatest person he ever met. Sounds like you got a bad case of the halo effect and it's gonna, and I know for sure it will because it always does, it's gonna come crashing down on your fragile little spirit and crush it. God damn retarded men, when will they learn? Always falling for the first girl that isn't a cunt to them, pathetic.

>>19990573
Not to the same degree, because the kind of people who know enough about otaku culture to laugh at it (beyond "ur nerds lol!") are already otaku-lite. This is where ironic weebs come from. They use it to shield themselves from accusations of being too nerdy.

>>19990595
Well okay then.

>>19990595
>girl that isn't a cunt to them
What's the fun in that?

>>19990596
That makes sense. It's sad that people care so much about what people they don't even know or barely know think of them that they feel the need to hide their interests behind walls of irony. This actually puts the "pedos hate loli/anime" thing in perspective, though. Irony was a mistake.

>>19990641
It depends on intention, if they've got a sadistic streak and do it to get under your skin for fun, that's one thing, but genuine and unintentional cuntiness is a lose/lose situation.

>>19990595
It's funny how /jp/ generally has a better grasp of human relationships and psychology than boards that ostensibly focus on them. Is it just because we're old?

>>19990560
Again, you're taking the word escapism in a very literal sense. That's not what it means.

Escapism isn't just escaping from reality, it's specifically fiction designed to escaping from the harsher side of it
.
Unless you're telling me shit like Saving Private Ryan (depiction of the harsh realities of war), Noli me Tangere (Propagandist fiction designed to incite revolution against Spain by depicting harsh Spaniard rule, and was successful), and even from your favorite anime media like Serial Experiments Lain (which have heavy themes of loneliness and accepting reality) were written for people that want to forget about the troubles of reality, then I can't help you.

Escapism is about escaping the harsh realities of life. How would fiction designed to blast you with said harsh realities, and maybe even give you a new harsh reality or two, escapism?

>>19990652

I feel at least 20 years older than I really am. Luckily I will surely die before that.

>>19990722

As one memey song already said: "you can be addicted to a certain kind of sadness".

>>19990644
Irony is great when someone who is secure wields. It's insecurity that is the real problem.

Sadly, a common type of nerd is both too weak and too normal for his and his hobby's good. He never lets go of who he was in the high school status hierarchy. He makes the dual mistake of sharing his hobbies with normalfags and constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure he still fits in. The funniest thing is that it never works. Other fans don't really like him because he disparages them for status points. Normalfags smell the fear behind his compulsive image management. In the end, he is confined to the worst corner of his fandom with only other douchebags like himself for company.

>>19990725
You can be addicted to pretty much anything, doesn't necessarily mean it's escapism.

>>19990749
wields it*

>>19990722
Harsh reality presented in a certain way can be escapism. WH40k thrives on this.

>>19990761
Warhammer isn't exactly the best example of escapism since it has more focus on worldbuilding than actual plot, similar to Touhou.

Warhammer's "harsh realities" aren't at the forefront of the series.

>>19990722
>saving private ryan
>harsh realities of war
The entire movie wasn't the beach landing. We can call it a realistic depiction of the harsh realities of war when they turn the beach landing into the entire film. Not saying it didn't hit hard, or wasn't disturbing or sad, but it's not a good example of that. Jin-Roh depicts the harsh realities of war and violence in a way that is fucking terrifying in 15 seconds of the first 15 minutes.
>propagandist fiction
Propaganda movies are a one-sided affair that try and paint whoever they support as completely justified and in the right, it doesn't show the whole, real picture. Battleship Potemkin, if you didn't have any prior political beliefs or views/opinions, a certain film critic said that you would become a Bolshevik. The audience went fucking nuts in approval when they saw the hand tinted red flag, it was a celebration from their view.
>favorite anime and manga
Distant enough from reality that it causes me to reflect and think on it while it's on and afterwards, but my attention is still away from the rest of the real world. There's nothing stopping me from disagreeing with the author's message or opinions and enjoying the rest of the work as a whole. Your work is pro-fascism/war? Discarded. Anti-otaku/waifufag/people enjoying what they enjoy? Discarded, thanks for the rest of the work. Life is shit and you might as well make the best of what you have, even though you know how terrible the rest is? Fucking agreed? Its all an escape, a distraction from reality. Even worse realities like 40k or AoT, that are genuinely fucked, depressing, and horrifying, still are a distraction. You can even find hopes and wish fullmillment in those that you would never in the real world, depsitw those horrors. Call me when the Cadian guard or the Recon Corps starts accepting recruits.

>>19990786
>aren't at the forefront of the series
wat

>>19990751

Escapism should be kept distinct from the glaucous tendency of a medium for denouncing a sickly tendency within society. The latter can be associated with what Yukio Mishima called the little theater of daily unhealthiness (sorry for the weird english here I'm translating a translation). Don't forget that otaku culture is so fucking wide in scope that labeling everything as escapism is pretty much stupid. Otakus are also strangely highly political people, I was about to say especially in Japan but with all the meme wars waged by 4chan it would be insulting to the western weebs. As such, it isn't really surprising that when their favorite medium or genre attacks what they deem an unjust and dysfonctional society they are attracted to it.

>>19990786
>it has more focus on worldbuilding than actual plot, similar to Touhou
Agreed.
>Warhammer's "harsh realities" aren't at the forefront of the series.
How did you come to this conclusion? Genuine question, because from my perspective it's so obviously false. WH40k's worldbuilding is all about slave-operated ancient technology and various corruptions of the soul. If anything, its preferred method for making the horrors of the setting palatable is to pile them on until they get ridiculously over the top.

>>19990800
Do you have any recommendations for where to start reading Yukio Mishima? I'd have to do it in translation.

>>19990819

I hope it will still hold true in 10 years. GW has been so retarded recenly with their children books featuring gender queer crippled pacifists colored children that I fear they might off themselves through sheer retardation like star wars, gost busters or the latest cancer that is politically correct videogames who inevitably bomb harder than cyclonic torpedoes.

>>19990841

I'd say that the novel collection "Dojoji and other novels" is a very good introduction. Sorry if it only exists in french and not in english but since apparently he himself chose the translation into french to be made from the english one I guess it may exist in the same form.

>>19990788
>war
Example aside, sure.
>propaganda
Being highly political is a form of reality, even if it's massively biased. It might wrongly pander to people's political perspective, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's to escape "reality". Simply because these political agendas thoughts come from people's own reality, and making people think about said reality is already against the idea of escapism.

You seem to be missing the point. I've told again and again that escapism is designed to distract people to throw away the harsh realities and make themselves feel better.
"Designed" is the key word, here.

And your viewpoint of disregarding authorial intent or literary themes doesn't really make sense on an argument for it to be all escapism.
People who are addicted to to works that are geared towards escapism and want to genuinely escape said reality don't want to face it for a reason. Shit that resembles reality would not be in their list, or would they likely enjoy it.

Hence why these people tend to smooch the harems and whatnot.

>>19990819
40k is supposed to be a parody of fascism and the far-right extremists that were becoming prevelent in 70s/80s britain, but then it started taking itself seriously and became as we know it today. The more you know about the setting, the more horrifying it gets, like you were getting at. Now, when the writers remember subtlety exists, 40k is nightmare fuel +5. Go look at the entry on Tyranids on one of the non-silly/1d4chan wikis and pretend that shit doesn't scare you. Their presence prevents all non-technical communication, drives the astropaths and psykers into insanity and even death, they slowly drift through space until they hit a planet, and they attack in unlimited numbers until all resistance and life is wiped out, then they build massive biomechanical towers and drain the planet of all biological life, until it's a barren rock, and then move on. They constantly adapt to whatever advancements you use against them, they absorb aspects of whoever they fights, and they don't stop. They spent thousands,maybe millions of years slowly drifting through space towards the milky way. Pour some water from a pitcher onto a globe of the world, slowly, and you'll see how they swarm a planet. Tell me that isn't some of the most horrifying shit in sci fi.

>>19990819
I worded that fairly badly.

I meant that while the world itself has a lot of horrible implications, perhaps worse than ours, it has less focus on the emotional standpoint of it all. Again, kind of like Touhou.
It doesn't exactly introspect the harsh realities of said world, in a sense.
At least, is how I view it.

What I realize here is Touhou is the Warhammer of Japan.

>>19990880
I'm addicted to hardcore escapists works, and I hate haremshit and powertripping shounenshit. Self inserting is the big gay. It seems like we have a very different views on fiction and how they relate to reality, though. It does help that a lot of contemporary politics and real, grimdark world related fiction tend to be a joke, like Detroit: Beyond Human trying to be a retelling of the civil rights movement or whatever, instead of a spiritual successor the GiTS II: Innocence, or whatever GATE with it's "oh boy let's go do the 30s again!". Again, it can resemble reality very closely but be an escape. Criminal Minds turns the real world into a horror series, but it gives you hope and escapism because of how cool and admirable the main characters are, and how there are people out there, like them, trying to help people and do the right thing. It's still escapism because it focuses on these genuinely good and just people, something we don't see every day. That's a distraction, escapism.

>>19990918
>warhammer of japan
Suprisingly accurate. Both have infinite possibilities. /tg/ and luth turn it into a cutesy/anime/hentai wish fulfillment paradise, and if you dare enter their magical realm, go check out the shit on 1d4chan, starting with the page on "Waifus", and eventually working your way over to read all the writefaggotry. So, very much so.

>>19990941
I used to be a fa/tg/uy
The autism still runs strong in my blood

>>19990954
bruva!
It's late, good night, may the emprah be with you.

>>19990860
Thanks. I don't know French, but I'll see if I can find the equivalent in one of the Euro languages I know.

>>19920946
NERD!

Immaterial and Missing power was good for a fighter, which other games are gems?

>>19919269
Yes it is, when ZUN created Touhou, he was trying to escape from his crippling reality with Rinnosuke as his self insert.
But now that he is married and stable, he no longer need Touhou that's why VD sucks.

>>19991074
>Rinnosuke as his self insert
[citation needed]

>>19991077
He's other self insert was Aya.

>>19991094
And his most pathetic self insert was Sumireko.

>>19990887
For a moment I thought he was talking to Suiseiseki.

>>19990962
May you bring your magical realm to the table unrequested for many sessions to come.

>>19990941
Didn't /tg/ have somewhat frequent Touhou threads before /jp/ existed?

>>19991074
It's scary when you think of it. If you create something as popular as Touhou, many thousands of people will want you to NOT be too happy or too content with life so that you don't stop creating.

>>19991170
Yeah, that's actually how I first became aware of the series. Touhou threads continued to be fairly common up until the moderators decided to excise basically all content not related to either Warhammer or D&D.

>>19990015
>>19990015
>>19990015
It’s funny how relevant Don Quixote is after all these years. If that is the case, when fiction sweeps into and influences reality, at which point is it escapism or just a part of reality?

Dostoevsky does make me think about the world, but it also attaches me from it while thinking about it, but his way of thinking has actually influenced the world and how people act.

>>19990788
What about films by Ingmar Bergman? I am pretty sure that there is no hope in Cries and Whispers, the Seventh Seal reflects my constant fear of death and Through a Glass Darkly really hits hard if you have a family members that has schizophrenia.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and Tokyo Story are both extremely realistic and mundane films.

>>19990272
>tend to act more like old men than women
I don't think that's the right term. It's a deliberate mix of longevity, carelessness or pretended childishness and beer. In other words Touhou ladies are great because they can take it easy.

>>19992188
>constant fear of death
That's a personal problem, easily remedied by deciding on an afterlife, religious or no. Brown Tewi said there are as many Gensokyos as there are people who dare to imagine it, so why not go to your own Gensokyo? Or be a devout Christian, dedicate yourself to capital G God, and he, if he so chooses, may lift you from your state as a maggot in a cesspool of sin into heaven, so that you may be struck in awe and worship of God for the rest of eternity (this is a description given by a hardcore devout Christian aquaitence)? There is no reason to let yourself be crippled by a fear of the inevitable, why not be ready to embrace it? Personally, the prospect of meeting Sanae and Patchy overpowers any kind of fear or apprehension towards the inevitable.

>>19992332
>taking it easy
An understatement, if anything they've created a whole new level of taking it easy. They've mastered the art of taking it easy, they're thirteen steps to nowhere and perfectly content with that. tfw it could be another 70-80 years before you get 5 minutes alone with Reimu

>>19992586
People don't just come up with a vision of an afterlife they like and start believing in it, you know. We are great at fooling ourselves, but can't do it so directly. To start to believe in Gensokyo you need to trick yourself into it.

>>19990887

>it started taking itself seriously and became as we know it

I stopped reading here.

>>19990918

You'd thought that the one with a god-emperor would be a Japanese favorite but nope. As for the emotionnal standpoint of 40K that's exactly the point of the setting: no emotions. Everything is barely kept in place through sheer cold monolithic administration and utter denial of anything remotely human. The fact that emotions and belief can litterally spawn warp yokais is certainly no coinc- wait. We're onto something here.

>>19992618

Maybe you can achbar yourself into a synagogue and ask allah for your 72 virgins to touhous. And then complaint at the after sales service that your Sanae already reeked of cum.

>>19994080
Would those be 3D touhous?

>>19994054
40k has plenty of emotions in it, it's not apathetic, just very, very dark. Emotions and belief are beneficial to chaos, but there's no helping that, and without chaos, there is no emotions, the chaos gods may embody only the extremes at face value, but they cover a very broad amount behind the curtain. There is hope to be found, happiness, things to fight for, things to live for, but they tend to feel overshadowed by the horrors of the universe. 40k just hasn't been allowed to reach it's full potential, and the surface level shit that the japs would see turn them off. /thanks/ has done the i.p. better and closer to it's full potential than GW would ever, because they gotta sell those space marines to the rich kiddos, can't let the 40kids see the franchise go in any real direction, because SALES and the times that are partly responsible for AoS. You seem to have a very surface level perception of the franchise. 40k is no more dark or emotionless than AoT or any ultraviolent grimdark/derp anime.

>>19996093
*/tg/, damn autocorrect.

>>19996093

Emotionless in its day to day handling of the Imperium. That thing is basically 1984 (GW being britcucks and all) mixed with the spanish inquisition dysfunctional feodalism predating the latter included. The same thing can be said for the eldars but this time it is with ultra deep platonism to avoid birthing a second god of raping children while eating them on coke on one side and actually raping children while eating them on coke to satiate said god on the other side. This pattern repeats itself all over 40K, you are either a frothing at the mouth retards fueled by any kind of strong emotion (or just an Ork) or you are muted by choice (eldar) or by the authority (the imperium or the taus). A few flamboyant characters exists like the rogue traders or some individuals but the point is rather to sell figs from a cool universe than make a setting like ZUN would do.

Saying that the superficiality is what keeps the nips at bay is also completely retarded as the nips love them a good superficial as fuck setting as long as it has cute girls. Said lack of cute girls in 40K is litterally half the reason they don't touch it. To my knowledge there is also japanese text on the front side and manual of everything GW makes so actual sale numbers could be interesting here.

>>19996282
It has loads of cute girls, but they don't get much focus and GW cant into good looking female minis for the life of them, and besides, soccer mom's don't like that shit. Never forget, Slaanesh got pseudo-squatted for a while in AoS because GW wanted to bring in the tykes. It's very much related to GW not allowing the franchise to go full-on 2hu, because you can do almost anything with 40k, even cutesy slice of life antics and CGDCT, all the way down to berserk style shit and cheesy satirical comedy, the orks are right up the japs alley, appearance aside. 40k is locked into superficiality, and it's crazy, because it's the entire Galaxy, and if you can set the majority of 2000+ years of fiction on one planet, think of everything you could do with the whole galaxy, especially with all the craziness 40k adds to it. Interesting change of topic in this thread.

>>19996417

40K isn't more superficial than touhou is. I honestly don't get where you get that from. Beside GW fuckery to sell manchildren toys touhou isn't really more deep unless you mistake the whole "it's cute on the surface but beware !" aspect of it.

>>19996282
Is this japanese text? Figured it was chinese.
It's like Gundam, in the end, it's to sell toys to kids and manchildren, so all that worldbuilding and originality/coolness of the franchise goes out the window and into the trash if the reigns fall into the wrong hands. Gunpla are cool, but fuck Bandai for prioritizing Gunpla sales over creative freedom of the writers. Fuck GW for either using Ward as a scapegoat or for allowing him to run free with the Ultramarine wank, whichever is the truth (to be fair, if it wasn't for the spiritual liege bullshit, we'd have never gotten Captain Titus). If it was a doujin franchise, with the TT game and a good chunk of the lore being primary, and everything else being secondary or tertiary, 40k could truly be western 2hu.

>>19996464
Touhou is deep.

>>19996500
What is "deep"?

>>19996508
A darkness that lies beyond human ken.

>>19996464
It's superficial because /tg/ is closer to the franchise's full potential than GW would let it, and 2hu has always been fully unlocked and accessable, you can make your own fangames, novels, porn, entire movies and animated series, which is something GW actively hates, fan productions and hobbyist offshoots. They C&D youtube parodies even and fan movies, for crying out loud. You can even make money off your 2hu fanworks on steam and at comiket, something GW would sick their legal bloodhounds at in a frenzy.

>>19919269
I just hope nobody kills themselves leaving a note how they went to Gensokyo and have 2hu labeled a suicide cult in the West. Imagine the TV broadcasts.

>>19996533
The Steam game releases got permission ZUN, though, didn't they?

>>19996551
2hu really is a suicide cult though, you and I aren't initiates yet, obviously.

>>19996558
There's a special liscense thing on there for 2hu doujins being sold, go look at one of the fangames and it'll list it in the store page.

>>19996628
Then how do you know?

>>19996667
The truth gets out there, regardless of what might seem possible, like with the bull's head urban legend.

>>19995946
>is heaven 3d
Why would it be?

>>19996726
Since we were talking Allah and Islam doesn't look kindly on 2D.

>>19996765
Did they not like ISIS-chan?

>>19996831
You know, I've just checked Wikipedia, and ISIS-chan now has a scholarly article published about her.
>Anna Johansson (2017): ISIS-chan – the meanings of the Manga girl in image warfare against the Islamic State, Critical Studies on Terrorism, DOI: 10.1080/17539153.2017.1348889
>https://my.mixtape.moe/yosimq.pdf
Still no page about Ebola-chan. But never mind, because they have this girl and she is definitely cool. I'd love to see a whole collection of ethnic slur-tans.

>>19996906
You didn't already know about ISIS chan? She's not exactly a ethnic slur-tan, either, just anti-ISIS waifu warfare. Her rules were even "no islamophobia, racism, politics, etc, just cute and muskmelons". It's kind of sad to think that all the parody and media attention ISIS has gotten is essentially negative attention propaganda.

>>19996958
I knew about ISIS-chan, but I was surprised to find out someone had published an article about her in a research journal. That's recent. I didn't know about Hinomoto Oniko. I was referring to her when I mentioned ethnic slur-tans. It looks like she has some pretty good art.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinomoto_Oniko

>>19996985
Nice. Very cute.

>>19996985
Getting shades of Ranma 1/2 or Urusei Yatsura from her look here.

bumping to give this girl >>19996985 exposure

>>19990887
>40k is supposed to be a parody of fascism and the far-right extremists that were becoming prevelent in 70s/80s britain,
Have you actually looked on what 40k was back then? It was literally Warhammer Fantasy but in space. The "parody of fascism" is shit new players are saying because they don't know 40k's actual origins.

>>19996500
Touhou is complex, not deep.

>>20003499
Touhou is complexly deep.

I've always wanted an open world Touhou game so i could explore Gensokyo. That one minecraft map was pretty cool

>>20003741
Could be interesting as long as it isn't canon, because that would constrain future works' geography.

>>20003741
I remember seeing that minecraft map when I was first learning about Touhou a while ago and it made me really happy.

>>19996551
Should we tell him?

>>20004056
Tell me what? Has there already been a 2hu-themed suicide? I tried to find one before I posted >>19996551 but couldn't.

Tell me more about Gensokyo and escapism. I want to escape to Gensokyo.

>>20004145
There's been quite a few suicides documented on /jp/ in the past which left a note stating their intent to visit gensokyo

Once dreamt someone was telling me Yukari was trying to get him to suicide so that he could change. Yukari was there too, as my teacher, or something, hearing that stuff before sort of brought my waking thoughts of wanting to escape to another world into the dream so I was going to ask her about that but alas, someone came up to her and distracted her right as I was going to pose the question, then I woke up shortly after.

>>20004174
They probably would have killed themselves anyway, if anything, 2hu prolonged their time with us

>>20004174
You mean threads like pic related? There is no telling if they led to actual suicide. Even if the OP of a few of those ended up killing himself for real, I doubt he left a note mentioning Gensokyo for his family to find (as opposite to just posting one on /jp/ then destroying it when he contemplated suicide earlier).

I think there would be press coverage if something like that happened, especially if it happened in the US. The relatives would try to research what this "Gensokyo" was and warn others.

>>19996551
I was pretty serious about it at one point. I don't intend to kill myself right now, maybe if I get older, but I hope I can go to Gensokyo whatever happens.

>>20004300
I have always wondered who he drew in the bottom left.
seems like its kagerou but kyouko might be possible
might not even be a touhou

>>20005627
yuno

>>20004525
Dude, just go to Japan and find that mountain range that Gensokyo is based on. After, resist every instinct you have to leave, bring a magic item with you or sell your soul to the devil to become magical, or purposely go to the place you least intend to go and if that doesn’t work find a way to randomly determine a direction to go - then you will be sure to find the border despite the resistance towards mundane things.

>>20007679
I see it now, thank you

>>20007909
The rescue mission to find the crazy gaijin backwoodsman anon will make for an interesting news story. Be sure to wear a full Marisa cosplay to make it more memorable.

>>20004300
I'm pretty sure they actually did the deed, there was at least a more serious air to posts about suicide back then, before it became a normalfag meme to talk about depression and wanting to die.

>>20011911
It's always been difficult to tell which is which on the Internet.

>>20015087
nay
they just don't share the same eigenstates