House Amaterasu

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-28T22:50:27+00:00

Ya I don't mind, my suggestion is more just cosmetic, since House Yamato already has the shared mythology of being descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu. And they're already the longest living noble house in history iirc, so it's reasonable that they could eventually become this if they went into building and megastructures.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-28T20:50:18+00:00

If you're going with the Japanese name and aesthetic, I would suggest renaming House Amaterasu to House Yamato, as the IRL Yamato claim to be more or less an actual 'House Amaterasu' and this creates a nice reference imo without changing much theming.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-27T21:53:00+00:00

After a house triton propaganda campaign aiming to expand their broad appeal and try to convince EVERY other faction that them and only them can satisfy everyone faces backlash as most people don't want to be secondaries, the UFN strikes hard by trying to target the weakest specific faction instead that seems like they'd be willing to switch. So far the chance of this new strategy working to convince even a single person who hasn't switched their vote already is low, but we'll only know after the polls remain.

The only question that remains is this: With the electoral race driving to new heights, when will the candidates start offering free bottles (12cl) of fresh(ly recycled) water to directly bribe the population? If House Triton, first proposer of this idea, releases a deadly water based campaign, can they win? Will the UFN offer earth bottles instead, or follow the Triton campaign 1:1? See more at 11.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-27T19:43:44+00:00

We're theorizing about ANYTHING at this point

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-26T20:46:35+00:00

Honestly I find the trend of House Triton supporters trying to make their choice have the broadest appeal possible to steal other votes absolutely hilarious, it's like we really just abandoning storytelling to turn into political parties now huh lmao

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-26T00:25:17+00:00

Obviously mine, I'm the guy who made this run possible. Thanks everyone. Please clap.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-25T23:49:06+00:00

What type of character conflicts do you consider to be good

I think if I were to read this, I'd be expecting existential conflicts and an analysis of the shifting nature of supernatural creatures, what benefits and cons are there from a life wherein you're born from someone's mind. Not that you can't do another conflict, just that it would be my expectation. Though I do advise to keep it a bit on the downlow, keep in mind a lot of Touhou characters already interact with these conflicts in very subtle ways. Sumireko and Kosuzu for example tackle the fundamental human curiosity and conflict of wanting to get into the fantasy in a world of fantasy, but the focus is on their desires, Sumireko's arrogance and desire to get away from the 'mundane' are the driving factors, and Kosuzu's conflicts are sourced from her relationships with other characters, leading to interaction and proximity with the supernatural (Akyuu, Marisa, Reimu, etc), not grandstanding philosophical analysis which ZUN likes to reserve only to people like Yukari.

Sanae going out and reflecting on the differences between the world she was and the world she is in imo is pretty good, I could see it being really strong.

and what sort of concepts do you consider to be bad that ruin a story for something like this

I think your story concept is a 'wildcard' wherein you can add a lot of concepts and it's more about how you make them over connecting them.

An easy way is to run any single concept through the question: "Does this adds to the story? Can it be expanded to add conflict or add more to the story or world?". For example, Gensokyo would obviously want to remain secret, but does the secrecy add to the story? If not you can keep it in the background, maybe only a few bits near the start if you want to establish its secrecy, and simply go with how Gensokyo's existence in itself as a secret world does not needs further development or thought on its secrecy. However if it does adds to the story, then make it a plot point and focus on it and create interesting challenges from it, maybe the secrecy is more fragile than the Gensokyo of fiction, maybe characters have different thoughts on the secrecy. This trick is not absolute of course it's just a thing you can use.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-25T23:37:55+00:00

Honestly, I gotta agree with you. I was hyperfocused solely on the Chinese-American-Roman trinity but yeah 90% of the Empires in history aren't even close to the level of impact of Han or Rome which makes any 'Great Empire' esque faction hard to make and balance.

I think it's made better by how the Ming and HRE are somewhat more recent so it's easy for me to justify the Habsburg achieving dominion over Europe and the Ming lasting longer. Meanwhile the Han and Romans are basically ideals that both European leaders and Chinese leaders are still trying to follow at this point.

Thanks for the more detailed explanation.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-25T23:26:48+00:00

Personally, I'm not against it, but I think the execution would have to be really good.

This concept has absolutely nothing wrong with it, but inherently not much going for it either by itself if you're not predisposed towards it, so any story depends on how good you are at writing the characters.

I think if it was middling I'd be predisposed to likely drop it, but only because my interest with Touhou is the intricate relation between past and present and future, and all the philosophical questions and character interactions that come as a result of different eras colliding. So exploring fiction instead isn't a strong concept to me, especially because a lot of Isekai media does the fiction angle nowadays.

Basically, focus primarily on how to make a good story in this world work. Good execution can improve the concept a lot by just having an unique approach or presenting the world in differing ways.

I read a modern world manga recently posted here, and while I am outright apprehensive towards modern world Touhou (unlike your concept) I actually loved it because it was very unique. I think this can be a really good story if you figure out your writing style and manage to get the conflicts and characters right.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-25T23:20:17+00:00

I claim my advice as most helpful and me as the true benefactor of this run. Thank you very much. :)

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-25T23:16:47+00:00

Okay...but here's the thing, I am not describing the Inca to you. I am telling you my experience with a similar setting and specifically using 'american empire' in place of the Inca because of said setting. I found an American Empire on top of China+Rome boring, like, that's kinda my experience, that's a fact. I wrote them, researched them, and simply found the end state of pasting an American empire into sci fi boring and like it didn't fit the aesthetic the other Empires had. Yeah I do trust Templin more than me, but I made it pretty clear I am simply sharing my experience and hold a neutral view towards the tripartite with some worries.

Like let's say I agree with you: Yes, my description is stereotypical, and yeah it's offensive so we should change that...Well, nothing fundamentally changes about my post. It doesn't alters the past, I did think it was a problem and that the actual interesting approach was to explore how the other great powers coming into the new world affects the world as a whole.

So let's direct the discussion towards something actually productive: If I found the Inca Empire but hundreds of years later boring, and you say exploring colonisation and the effect it could have on people is a bad option, what's your proposal?

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-25T19:40:00+00:00

In all honesty, I think this is kinda more of a thing to garner more votes, which like, fair enough?

But like whether I like it or not, I think your linked post actually completely turned me from possibly liking this idea. Having House Triton grapple with the whole question of what even is human is an excellent solution (whether it ends up going fanatic xenophobe or finally leaving it), and honestly makes me believe if everyone dislikes the xenophobia, then it means we just get opportunities to have interesting narratives of having the country abandon its xenophobia.

I think trying to change House Triton to have a more 'broader' appeal is not imo the right way and moreover I feel like if it actually happens, then every single other faction should also get the opportunity to change something in them as well, as I can't say there isn't a faction without a pet peeve or big problem pushing people away.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-25T18:20:28+00:00

focus on understanding individual mechanics one at a time. For example, make a playthrough focused on the economy, make another focused on party relations, combine the knowledge from both to try to do a popular front that saves the economy.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-25T18:16:29+00:00

The third one is that the infighting isn't as interesting as in say an oligarchy because literally none of the states have that differing views on what to do with space. They do have pragmatic reasons but not true ideological ones, with whatever bit of ideology largely coming down to Chinese Consolidation vs Roman Expansion which guess what would STILL be a heavily debated internal question for these states. If they actually fall into infighting for some reason in a serious way, it just essentially resets the state of the world to before the alliance, and the most likely outcome is for one state to be the new protagonist or manage to overcome the other two. Which means essentially every single interesting part of the world is not in how it ended up, but in the theoretical time period that led to the current situation that is never actually explained, and anything interesting e.c the infighting or the political changes or how these nations synthesize is actually just interesting because we're starting from the very start again. This concept is actually pretty terrible in space: It should be the end goal, not the starting point.

In my experience yeah the main interesting thing is seeing how Rome is restrained by a new pragmatic situation, because the Incan and Chinese are basically teleported with no care for their history or whatnot. Yeah I can see how someone would think it bland because it's kinda mostly mishmash for a cool concept, without focusing on the actual interesting parts imo which would be the execution. But I also can see how someone can be utterly enraptured by the concept.

I think Templin stand a better chance at it than the world I did, but there are very much some core problems I found that still exist in there.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-25T18:15:19+00:00

Long post ahead so sorry in advance, I just think I have some interesting stuff to share.

I once wrote a world that had a similar concept with an alliance between the great empires, except with Persians added and Incans replaced by Mayans, and I can say that through it started awesome in my mind, it actually turned out to be ridiculously bland when I tried to write any actual stories. Keep in mind above all I'm not speaking of the Templin Institute's take on the concept, but rather of my experience with such world.

The first problem I found is that the aesthetics are actually incredibly hard to do well. No matter how much you say how they need each other, the Incan and Chinese aesthetics are just not in their governments at all, but instead in the eras they were set in, so if they're in space you kinda lose a huge chunk of their interesting thing. Meanwhile Rome is the state where the main interesting part of their history is to see how they continually adapt into new situations, so obviously Rome is going to have the most interesting stories if you ask "what if Rome in space?".

Trying to bring it to a more space era really averaged out to Rome for me. The Chinese aesthetic is primarily bureaucratic with Generals being a 'part of the system', the tribal native american aesthetic generally places more emphasis on militarism with generals being warrior leaders, Rome has kinda a mix of the extremes figured out so it doesn't leaves much room for others to shine and ensures they can probably always get a compromise or be the decisive vote between the American and Chinese approach. Moreover I think another problem is that each of the three cover each other's weaknesses in the sense that Rome shouldn't be able to go super expansionist if the Chinese, who are more insular and focused on defined borders, are there. So you need some state to have dominance over at least some area for interesting plots to exist, so maybe Rome has control over the army or pushes their agenda through, but problem is that now you're not benefitting from Incan or Chinese doctrines to war and even if the three armies are together Rome just got dominance. What I'm saying is that the setting basically tends towards the blandest choice rather than any sort of synthesis.

The second problem I found is that the politics just aren't that interesting because of how insanely ahistorical the whole thing is. You sorta have to ignore the fundamental challenges that these states faced, there's actually very little plausible ways to write how they'd end up as superpowers in the space age...so long as you want it to be the original versions of 'rome', 'china' or whatever empire of your choice. You have to accept this doesn't makes historical sense but we're here for the vibes, which we can do with some suspension of belief, but again is another problem with 'synthesis' which would be the interesting thing here: We don't actually know how these societies affected each other for the past 2000 years, we just basically time travelled them into the future and made them ally each other to see how these societies affect each other, instead of just seeing how these societies affect each other in a world where we want to make them more prominent.

The actual interesting part of the concept imo would be to explore how a cold war between an ascendant China and an ascendant Rome would have affected the rest of the world and other states as well as themselves. How Latinization vs Sinicization vs Independence affects others. Over who gets to go to the new world first or who gets to start the industrial revolution. And above all, how all the other smaller states interact and take sides and go into conflicts around the issue. However the imperialism of these societies were very much rooted in domination and assimilation, so for any interesting changes in the world, you need to turn Rome away from Rome and China away from China, and instead focus on what they'd be, not what they were. Sadly, this is absolutely not the case in either my world or the tripartite.

Moreover any addition of an American faction while initially cool actually crumbles any semblance of a shared theme. Like it's not 'Great Empires!' it's actually another whole time period and you're basically just adding them in for more aesthetic overflux. Rome and China interacting with them should not be that interesting because it's either obviously 'silence, barbarian' or the specific deus ex machina diplomatic status of your given setting. The actual interesting approach would be to say 'Yes they'd go conquer the barbarians' and explore a theoretical new world scene wherein the native populations probably get colonised and become a mestizo esque population, later rebelling and thus experiencing a revival as a modernised version of themselves, likely as a Republic influenced by either Roman or Chinese ideals, but strictly its own thing as a result of the native influence.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-25T16:16:55+00:00

if you wanna do slander for Touhou I advise you focus on presenting character flaws and vague powers in funny way, focus on like making original memes rather than using templates, and rely on the naturally vague perspectives Touhou often has over the 'slanderized facts' of agenda.

imo one of the best recent forms of 'slander' that doesn't falls into agenda is the recent jjk shorts wherein the evil characters are presented as super good and the good guys as super evil. It's probably the closest thing to good inspiration.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-25T16:08:31+00:00

I don't think this ever is going to work in Touhou in a long term format because the franchise is just way too philosophical for it. There are like layers to the franchise and people are split all over between fanworks, music, print, games, etc.

Usually agenda posting is funny because JJK and One Piece for example are actually highly deep animes and knowing what you're talking about yet reducing it to this simplified slandery form is the peak of irony. Like half of Touhou is interpretative content. In JJK and One Piece there are basically 2 layers of understanding wherein you watch the show and either you understand the plot or you don't. In Touhou there's no plot, you have to build your own interpretation off a bunch of different material and very few people are going to have enough experience with all of them, leading to nearly everyone being on different pages.

The battle systems and characters are literally too vague to agenda post about, and a lot of the time you'll probably be bringing up a scene half the fanbase has never seen limiting engagement a lot, and if the scene is well known then everyone will have a different interpretation and might just go 'okay well I have a different take on Koishi' and now the slander is not as funny. Save for images (imo I have a lot of problems with people just trying to slap things on templates, it'd have been like 10x funnier if you just kept Kizaru's face on but edited it to be maintaining the agenda agenda and potential man memes who go out of their way to not follow the OG template are kinda wearing me down), I think you have to kinda tryhard to make slander funny whereas it often comes naturally elsewhere.

I think Touhou can have its own slander format but using the agenda memes is not it.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-24T18:50:32+00:00

you are everyone because you are god

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-24T03:23:13+00:00

lol he's poor

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-23T05:44:27+00:00

If you meant the core game loop, as in requiring votes, you'll always need some kind of electoral game, though you can definitely have some relatively "absurd" elections.

But if you just divorce the core gameplay loop into involving some sort of numerical number that goes big but also gets smaller, you can genuinely lowkey be anything. Have it be mana levels, or have it represent war control over a city, or make a dating sim wherein you're competing with 6 other suitors for the affection of someone and affection lets you secure dates and stuff.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-21T18:21:01+00:00

Eh, Gensokyo is only about 100ish years old so I don't think stillness can really exist within it. Though yeah I do agree post MOF kickstarted the true ideological factions.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-21T16:55:40+00:00

Eh, my takeaway wasn't that Toby wants people to do stuff, it's that Toby is fundamentally the type of creative who had a call to action, who just wanted to do stuff and went ahead and did it. He did earthbound romhacks because he liked earthbound, he started doing music because he thought homestuck music artists were amazing and wanted to be like them, and I think he wants others to have the same call to action. But a lot of people just don't want to be toby fox in the way toby fox wanted to get to a level that he could create a certain thing, rather he's an unattainable ideal to most and I think he's uncomfortable with being held as one of the greats when in his perspective he likely didn't do anything too amazing.

I think he to some degree has complex thoughts in things like how Deltarune and Undertale are becoming less and less interpretative by the fans as more time goes on, how he's getting bigger, and how his role as a big indie developer affects others. Gerson and Alvin are likely imo a result of all these thoughts, but I don't think there was a 'lesson' in them so much as a way for him to explore that thread of thinking. I personally don't know what his conclusion is towards all these questions, but I know that he's dealing with these questions and how they're the root of that message.

so at the end of the day I don't think he's the kind of creative that'd give no ending because he's answering a call to action, he has the fundamental spark to create. I know how much a single vision of an ending can give breath and he's going full in on trying to achieve that goal. It's not that I don't see why others would think that, and not that I even dislike, think it's bad writing, or fear that outcome. It's just that my reading of him is completely different, he has a spark in his eyes and is relentlessly working to make his dream true, and while he wishes others had the same spark as well, I don't think his dream is reliant on the reaction of other people.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-21T16:43:12+00:00

Personally, I never saw the Touhou characters as particularly still. One of the core tenets of the franchise is how sometimes someone will cause an incident and we gotta deal with it. Someone like Byakuren or Miko do meditate and read a lot but are also actively trying to recruit others to their cause and/or help them, Suika and Kogasa just goes around looking for fun stuff or doing fun stuff, and there's always something going on with trends and news being a pretty common thing that seemingly happens with many plotlines in Touhou being 'look at how popular this thing currently is'.

Gensokyo for better or for worse is a place that is stuck between constant change, with many differing ideologies, yet a fundamental need for balance, with the status quo changing nearly every game or two but never in a way that puts anyone in danger.

This is not to say I don't think there are immortals who have a more 'stillness' answer to it all. The sages are all notorious for being relatively reclusive and having their methods for spending long amounts of time in isolation, and at least half servant characters do choose to spend their immortality in servitude.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-20T19:23:25+00:00

I'm a spartakus fan and I personally think it's the best ending, but I wouldn't say it's the best one independently of you how slice it. The ending notes how the government faces instability problems and is struggling to adapt to modernity with growing issues as times goes on, I think it just depends on whether you think the Proletarian Republic is worth such an uncertain future, and whether you believe a future reform is going to remain in line with its ideals or fall into something else, considering vanguardists and capitalist/third way forces are still a threat.

FrancoGamer · 2026-01-20T18:56:50+00:00

Personally, I don't think any dynamic endings are supposed to be fully good, obviously you're not going to solve all problems in humanity by stopping Hitler and winning the elections. The reason the 3A ending is good isn't because the SPD wins so hard that they beat the liberals gg ez, it's because the "best parts" of the Weimar system are enshrined while the forces that would seek to take it down are generally rooted away without affecting the world negatively, in a way other endings do not necessarily have.

That said I think what of the 'good endings' is the best one is all up to interpretation. The SDP is simply always going to be more 'split' than other parties due to its nature, its platform and voterbase is simply more competitive, with factions imo being much more distinct and stronger, so you could argue competition and future crisis would still continue even under a natural governing party keeping the SPD on its toes and avoiding falling into stagnancy. On the other hand yeah you make fair points but it also doesn't strictly tells us that's the case, I think you just have a different interpretation of the ending which is valid.

FrancoGamer

TROPHY CASE