Asbestos detected

hugging every mutual very tightly~...

BIG CHIKA

Somewhere, in a karaoke room right now, somebody is singing “Tequila,” “Do the Hustle,” or “Wipeout,” with the passion of a professional singer. ☺️

Everyday you wake up, you're continuing to write a story without knowing the ending. I think that's the joy of life at the end of the day ❤️

Touhou Fan Game Jam 16 starts in a month on October 23rd at 12:00 PM PST. Teams will have 72 hours to make a game based around a theme. The theme for this jam is: Tailor-Made! Links to the jam itself and the Discord (which has channels for team-forming) can be found below! #Touhou #TouhouJam

Now that I got a microsecond to breathe, read an interesting study on studies on suspense: suspense in stories seems to be more about danger, mystery, and importance of events rather than potential for positive of negative outcomes. www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Getting back into comedy, I’m reminded that the recent trend of “edgy comics for edginess’s sake” isn’t new, where punchlines are replaced with shock and crudeness. Andrew Dice Clay and his ilk were an example of the last generation of these, and it didn’t last. Neither will this generation’s.

First Impressions - Delta Force 2025: Delta Force used to be one of the early ultra-real shooters akin to Operation Flashpoint or Ghost Recon. You’d think with new games like Arma, Insurgency, or Ready Or Not, they’d hit it out of the park. Instead, it’s just a poor Battlefield 2042 clone. 😞

12 trash bags and a ton of cleaning supplies later, I’m done. After talking it over with some buddies, turns out losing a roommate may have affected me more than I thought. Moral of the story: IRL social support is super important, more so than you’d think.

I finally figured out the secret to keeping a clean house. Keep inviting people over until you start feeling guilty about how messy it is. 🙂‍↕️

If you want scientific proof AI cannot write a joke if its life depended on it, look no further than Viktor Raskin, whose ideas helped influence standup comedy teacher Greg Dean. According to Raskin, there are 6 factors that determine a joke’s effectiveness: all six of which an AI cannot pull off. 🧵

The Touhou Popularity poll is now open! You can start putting your vote downs by accessing the site linked below! Be sure to turn on the page translation! Reminder that your 1st vote is worth 3 points and your 2nd vote is worth 2 points this year! toho-vote.info/vote

One of my favorite techniques in standup comedy, one I’ve borrowed from Chris Rock, is the rapid tag. Tags are additional punchlines. And a solid setup lets you use so many punchlines, you might need to reiterate the setup. Here’s the (NSFW) master at work: youtu.be/EQABSUtqoMc?...

First Impressions - Battlefield 6 Beta: Take the no-frills combat of Battlefield 3, the destructible environments of 4, and the chaotic large-scale battles of 2042, and you got a welcomed return to form. Looking forward to the full release, tweaks and fixes, and future maps.

ah yes, bad apple bees

We’re not sure who needs to hear this, but ‘blueberry’ has two b’s.

Been getting back into comedy studies, and all arrows point to the late Amazing Jonathan’s advice: a good joke, no matter the theory of humor (superiority, tension, incongruity, etc.), is like a good magic trick. It’s all about misdirecting the audience, and occasionally cutting folks in two.

An interesting concept I keep coming across in translations of Eastern storytelling guides (Japan, South Korea, China) is that you should be able to sum up every scene in an *image.* There should be a clear time, place, people, theme, motifs, and what’s going on, summed in images, not words.

Mini Review - The Naked Gun (2025): A throwback to the farcical spoof movies from ages past, with enough visual puns to do the original movies justice, but with modern cinematography and special effects. It’s pure silliness, balanced by a well-paced story.

First Impressions - Project Wingman: An unabashed love letter to the Ace Combat series, especially Zero, filled with references galore and boasting massive battles. It also features a roguelike Conquest mode where you choose where to go next in dynamic missions while building your air fleet.

There’s debate in narrative theory over “are characters ‘real’?” As in, do they occupy space beyond their media, or are they just ideas? And perhaps the evidence *for* that is the story of how Mel Blanc went into a coma, and the doctor coaxed him out by asking to talk to Bugs Bunny, which worked!

Just because you or your peers don't recognise your successes dosen't mean they don't exist. Every day is an opportunity to improve, to do better, and most importantly to do it all at your own pace. <3

Mini Review - Helldivers 2: A straight-forward co-op shooter set in a Starship Troopers-esque comedic dystopia. It’s as simple as it gets: land in a mission area, clear main objectives & search for side missions before time/lives runs out, and escape. Higher difficulties add more enemies/objectives.

Old Man Spaztique’s “Back in my day…”: Before online music, the only way to get all your favorite songs without having to buy a bunch of albums was through compilations, often sold by Time Life, Music Space, or Now That’s What I Call Music, all advertising on TV like this: youtu.be/QkI83wP27vU?...

Rich CEO: This new technology is going to save our company so much money! We’ll no longer have to hire experts or rely on long documents no human wants to read! Now, should I fire most of my staff and replace them with this? *shake shake* Magic 8-Ball: Definitely Yes

Touhou is for people who like Touhou.

Great mistakes in music history: What paved the way for grunge? It wasn’t just Warrant’s over-the-top “Cherry Pie.” Nirvana also made an over-the-top genre pastiche by accident as well. First, a little background. Here’s a song by “The Pixies,” one of Kurt’s favorite bands: youtu.be/HfLk4o6ybCU?...

Old Man Spaztique’s “Back in my day…”: Before phones had user-facing cameras, virtually *all* selfies in the early 2000s were done in front of bathroom mirrors (often with the flash on). Although still done day, this was how it started. And *nobody* ever turned the camera around or used webcams. 😒

I wonder how many other comedians have had the experience of irresponsible parents taking their kids to a show, the parent then arguing “there’s worse stuff on TV” and “people are too sensitive and comedians are too afraid to be offensive anymore,” only to angrily walk out after all the dick jokes.

Someone needs to make a Touhou Texas Hold'Em game where YOU can play against touhou characters to try to win BIG

Came across an interesting term in my research: dyad relationship, which basically means the space in which two parties form a third space. It accounts for 60-80% of success in social relationships, but I think this can also explain why some fan communities flourish and others don’t.

From the vaults, here are some SCP ideas I had before running out of juice to write more: Nightmare Fuel: A Euclid-class gas created by a cult to see their “gods.” Even a little causes vivid nightmarish hallucinations and panic attacks, but the cult fills entire gasmasks with this stuff.

Great mistakes in music history: in 1990, hair metal band Warrant wanted to switch to more serious rock music with their upcoming album “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (not to be confused with the classic anti-slavery novel of the same name): youtu.be/qXB3sSArfuA?... But Columbia Records had a problem…

Great mistakes in music history: The Beatles, inspired by all the protest songs of the era, wrote the song “Revolution,” split between the song proper and a sound collage. Here’s the song as it appears on The White Album: youtu.be/OmsXsIv2Ppw?...

Just an important reminder. Even though some terrible things have happened in the Touhou Project Fandom lately we shouldn't forget that very few people act badly and it's the size of the Fandom that makes it seem large especially with social media magnifying dramatic incidents. #Touhou

Great mistakes in music history: When Radiohead was forced to turn “Creep” into a single, they tried to prevent it by taping over the master copy with a blaring guitar that was supposed to tonally clash with the track. It ended up becoming the most iconic part of the song. youtu.be/zv_gSmH0Ieg?...

Texas' only severe weather warning system is watching for when Ted Cruz leaves the country

Personal writing advice: Don't be shy from taking inspiration, but try making your own spin on things. Think of a way to subvert a trope and make it feel new again.

The replacement of everything with generative AI is NOT inevitable, but it sure is if you all shrug and say "Well, it's inevitable" like your brain was washed in bad predictive SF for decades.

Been skimming the latest edition of Frontiers in Narrative Studies on counter-narratives, which makes an interesting insight: although the concept of counter-narratives are regularly applied in real life (history, news media), they’re rarely applied to fiction: www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/...

In a discussion on what makes a good fight scene, here’s an easy-to-remember way to write a fight scene: -Stakes: There are clear consequences of who wins and we care. -Suspense: We never know who will win or how, and each new strategy gives someone an upper hand. -Spectacle: It looks cool!

Pride jam is over, but no one can stop me from being a hopeless romantic forever. (In the jam sense.) (Because finally submitting a game gives me the same brain chemicals as romance.) kurantob.itch.io/secret-seali...

For Touhou Pride Game Jam 7, my team and I made a Visual Novel Cooking Game Hybrid where you play as Marisa! The game explores Marisa's journey to understand how she feels about Sakuya. Play and rate "Touhou: Food for the Heart" today! #touhoujam megapig9001.itch.io/touhou-food-...

From the social media buzz, we can throw Umamusume onto the pile of “successful attempts and replicating the transmedial series recipe.” Though, now I’m wondering about the exceptions and where these kinds of series can go wrong, but this is uncharted territory: a new type of narrative design.

Illustrations from Japanese fireworks catalogues (ca. 1880s) — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/japanese-fireworks-cataloguesFireworks #Fireworks appeared in Japan sometime around 1600 and were called hanabi — a combination of the kanji “fire” and “flower”.

Made a game for this year's touhou pride jam!! This was my first time submitting, so it was super exciting! You play as Satono trying to kiss Mai and dodge bullets without Okina noticing you aren't doing your job. Thank you to my sexy team <3 #touhou #東方project tubulartoasts.itch.io/crazy-backup...

Great moments in music history: Ah, the iconic sound of the 80s. It’s easy to tell a song is either from the 1980s or has that “80s sound” thanks to a little effect called gated reverb. Here’s a video of it in action, but where did it come from? youtu.be/joFpEofsgRU?...

Great moments in music history: It’s 1979, and Michael Jackson has just finished “Off the Wall,” a bunch of disco songs about partying and letting yourself go, just two months after Disco Demolition Night, an event marking the beginning of the end of disco. 🧵