Picture if you will, a young newcomer to the Touhou franchise, eager to make his mark on the community and become the strongest of Touhou fans. There are only a few minor obstacles in this hero's path to glory; namely, he can't even 1cc the game on Easy, and there are too many characters to remember.
What should he do to resolve these issues? Practice the games and get advice from better players until he reaches higher difficulties? Pay attention to the plot and setting beyond flash videos and memes?
WHY BOTHER?With this simple guide, you can go from n00b to Touhou master in just a few simple steps! So hold on tight, you're about to get Master Sparked all the way to popularity!
STEP 1.
ADOPT A PC-98 CHARACTER.There's a large cast of characters from the first 5 games in the Touhou series who the fandom have almost forgotten about. Anyone remember Rikako Asakura? Me neither!
Take advantage of this, and take one of these poor, forgotten girls as your waifu. Through your appreciation of the older entries in the franchise, you'll prove that you're a knowledgable, respectable Touhou fan. And best of all, because the PC-98 characters have almost zero characterisation, you can make them whatever you want them to be!
STEP 2.
DEMONSTRATE YOUR INGENUITY BY CHEATING YOUR WAY TO VICTORY.Here's a fact some of you may have not thought of - next time you play a Touhou game, run as many other programs in the background as you can. If you do it right, your game will creak to a halt, moving almost in slow motion, and you'll be able to sneak your way around even the hardest barrages with ease. You can tell people you've beaten UFO on Lunatic, and technically you won't be lying!
There may be people who claim your replay is hacked, but you can simply say to them that your computer has some sort of horrible specs, the sort they used to make calculators thirty years ago. They have no right to argue about the validity of your replay if you're poor!
Of course this assumes that you actually try to play the games. For the especially poor players (and the lazy) there's always:
STEP 2B.
'BORROW' A JAPANESE REPLAY.Get hold of some video recording software, and a high-ranking replay from a Japanese scoreboard. Record the replay running on your computer, but cut off the parts where the player's name is shown. Then upload to Youtube, and enjoy instant praise from your fellow Touhou fans!
STEP 3.
FIND AN OTP.Every True Touhou Fan has an OTP - a One True Pairing, a couple who absolutely must be together no matter how unlikely or nonsensical. The stranger the better - if you think that Mystia should totally get it on with Letty based on one ambigous line in PCB, make sure to declare this opinion as vocally as possible!
Comment on forums, Youtube videos, even Facebook pages! The sky's the limit, and because your pairing is the One True Pairing, you can rest assured in the knowledge that you are right and everyone else is wrong!
STEP 4.
MEMES, MEMES, MEMES.Memes are around for a reason. It's because they're funny. That means if you say them, you're funny, so therefore you should take every chance you can to spout memes wherever they'd come close to fitting. Make a Cirno joke any time someone mentions the number 9! End every post or line of text with 'ze'! Correct anyone who dares to refer to China by her actual name! Recite songs in romaji even if you don't know what the words actually mean!
There will be haters, but they simply can't understand the subtle, brilliant humour that brought these memes to power in the first place.
STEP 5.
EMBRACE FORUM RIVALRY.The Western Touhou Community is a strange thing. Do you frequent /jp/? MotK is a shithole full of noobposters! Do you frequent MotK? /jp/ is a bunch of elitist weeaboos who sleep with dakimakuras (and they aren't even part of your OTP)! This is a simple example, but in general no two Touhou forums get along. Take advantage of this fact by flaming other forums about whatever they have that's worse than your forum (which is obviously the best, no questions asked). For maximum effect, join all the forums under different names and troll every single forum at once! You'll earn respect from the entire community!
That's it! With these 5 simple steps, you can go from only being good for your sex appeal to being more hax than Yukari!
However, the producers of this guide are aware that in extreme cases, the above tips may in fact fail to raise you to the level of royalty, and indeed may make you actually disliked by the Touhou community.
In these situations, we can only suggest:
STEP 6.
RAGEQUIT THE SERIES.This is perhaps the easiest of all the steps. State, without evidence, that Touhou is inferior to CAVE games because they aren't as hard. Don't bother mentioning the music, the story, the characters, or anything like that. Play solely to the elitist shmup players, using your replays from Step 2 as evidence if necessary. People will argue with you on the matter, but simply declare them to be 'stupid' and never visit the forum again. You may not be the most respected Touhou fan, but no-one can disagree with you if you aren't around to hear them.
Good luck with your upcoming conquests, young Touhou fan! I hope these tips get you as far as I did in the community!*
