i've been thinking more about why Touhou grabbed me as hard as it did ten years ago (apparently), and i think part of it is that i've always been enamoured with magical realism to a degree

Harry Potter grabbed me pretty early on, too, before it broke my heart in the 5th book

the reason why Harry Potter doesn't hold up anymore is partially because i think a lot of people are getting that its depiction of magic and sorcery is skin-deep compared to the ideals it upholds

the other half of that is its awful politics, but that's one in the same, innit?

Harry Potter thinks advocating *equal rights for literal slaves* is an actual joke.

Touhou wants us to stop global warming and accept refugees.

but it's deeper than that, even. the magic in Touhou is more akin to traditional, subjective, "can't-learn-it-from-a-book" magic.

magic is a way of thinking, not a series of technicalities and techniques you can learn like a profession.

even Marisa embodies this, despite her book-learnin'. half of her magic is her style and attitude. it's what gives her true power.

Gensokyo captures that true "magic" mindset more than Hogwarts ever could. you can remove magic from Hogwarts and it would still "work." you can't remove magic from Touhou because its entire way of thinking is incompatible with the "default world." it's so thoroughly baked in.

part of the problem with trying to describe magic like this is that it's so subjective and intangible. i don't have the words for it because the words don't exist in our culture anymore. things like "otherkin" and "plural" come close but they're shades of what was.

other fantasy fiction and things like D&D try to capture some of it but it usually comes out looking like an encyclopedia of taxonomies and Enlightenment-esque "truth" rather than the subjective, personal nature of magic.

many classical "grimoires" weren't intended to teach people the specifics of spells and witchcraft. thinking of it like a "textbook" is a misnomer. many were intended to be deeply personal, subjective texts, almost like spiritual journals.

in that context, "The Grimoire of Marisa" is a perfect example of this. "here are some youkai I've fought, and how their spell cards made me feel." she doesn't even attempt any kind of objective assessment. she's just spitballing and talking about what worked/didn't work for her.

oh i am 110% on my bullshit tonight.

personally, i don't think you'd typically read a grimoire in order to learn a specific spell or cantrip. you'd read it to become acquainted with a different way of thinking, a completely different lens on how to work with the world.

anyway.

Touhou has many narrative layers to it.

it can be easy to get caught up in the "cute girls doing things" angle. it can also be easy to get caught up in surface-level sorcery aesthetic.

but beneath it all is actual, real, traditional magic. and it's incredible.

really working that "witch" in my bio tonight, huh

oh and: the primary failure of the Enlightenment was that it took all of this subjectivity, things people had relied on for eons, and helped the Christians burn it to the ground, leaving a spiritual vacuum in its wake which I believe has lead to many of our communal problems.

the Enlightenment made things worse for gender/sexual minorities including women at large, and any progress we've have made since then has been in spite of it, not because of it.

this is why i fundamentally despise biological taxonomies of human identity.

the Enlightenment didn't give us science and engineering; those things have existed everywhere since the dawn of civilization. what it did was decontextualize them and try to make them apolitical and ahistorical. we've been suffering through that travesty since then.

god, fuckin'.

i'm so worked up about this and it's fucking midnight.

i haven't done a long ranting tweet thread in so long.

i should just make a Touhou Part 2 blog post alread.

actually, yeah, there you go:

Harry Potter assumes the Enlightenment was a good thing.

Touhou assumes the Enlightenment never happened.

thanks for coming to my witchtalk

i'm getting a fair number of responses for this but my melatonin kicked in and i really cannot think anymore

have a magical night. chuuni rights

damn I really went off last night.

oh and: Little Witch Academia gets derided as "anime Harry Potter" but it manages to capture the essence of subjectivity more than HP does. Akko decides to become a witch not because she was born into a magical family but because it inspired her to be her best self.

it begins, gamers.