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Forum Name: Our Witches at War/Gallian Gothic
Topic ID: 82
Message ID: 20
#20, RE: Lack of artistic talent leads to boggle...
Posted by Gryphon on Sep-17-20 at 11:53 PM
In response to message #19
>Being that much cheaper makes me suspect them regardless of source.
>For something like this, I'd imagine they took castings of an
>original, cleaned them up, and are using the result to churn out
>80-90% accurate knock offs.

Yeah. At that price point I'm kind of tempted to get one just to see how bad it is, but... eh.

>>Fanon is especially unkind to Meiling, which I cannot
>>fathom since she's awesome.
>
>I'm not sure how close your version is to the source material, though
>I also gather that Touhou is almost a Rorschach test when it comes to
>how one might see its characters, but Meiling as presented here seems
>to just be a steady, cheerful presence. I get earth-bender vibes from
>her, even though I doubt there's a connection there.

Yeah, I haven't played the games, but the impression I get is that the characters don't have very well-fleshed-out personalities and the backstory is wide but not deep, both of which leave ample room for interpretation. Kind of like Kantai Collection, except that Kancolle characters do have a lot of
dialogue to at least sketch in the bones of their characterizations.

What that, and fandom being fandom, means is that people tend to latch onto one or two traits and ride them to the end of the rails. Sakuya is the chief maid of Scarlet Devil Mansion, so a lot of people present her as the operation's overall majordomo and, as often as not, a brutal taskmaster. Remilia likes to ham up the vampire shtick (and a cruel and capricious mistress of the household into the bargain), so in a lot of artists' eyes, she is only the vampire shtick, while to others she's the target of a million "charisma break" jokes, most of them mean. And so on.

Meiling's thing is that she's canonically the mansion's gatekeeper, which makes her one of the earliest level bosses the playable characters (who are assaulting the mansion on a mission of frankly dubious legitimacy*) encounter. Because that's the way the game is structured, not only does she have to lose, she has to be pretty easy to beat.

This has led a legion of fan artists to portray her as completely useless, either because she can't fight her way out of a paper bag, or because she's so feckless, lazy, and/or stupid she doesn't even notice intruders are entering the mansion half the time. This synergizes with the "brutal Sakuya" trope and leads to a lot of gags where Sakuya catches her not doing her job and sticks her full of knives (which she survives because a) she's very tough and b) it's for comic effect). In those interpretations, Remilia usually keeps her on because she's a cruel mistress and she thinks that's entertaining, or possibly she just doesn't really care if the gate is actually guarded in the first place.

I will say that one common fan trope about Meiling that I'm fully on board with is that she's good with kids, particularly Flandre. In settings where Flandre is just a bit strange, or destructive because she doesn't know any better, or for that matter totally fine, as opposed to completely psychotic or evil incarnate, she and Meiling are usually buddies (a role which Meiling is well-suited for, since she's so tough and so willing to put up with being damaged).

Hence my version, who is a hard worker, honest and incorruptible, innately cheerful, pretty much fearless, largely indifferent to physical hardship, and comfortable in her skin. She knows she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but also that she isn't as dumb as some people take her to be. Her taste in food and drink is catholic, her taste in women is if I may say so impeccable, and the rest looks after itself. Her only real flaw is a tendency to be a bit insecure about where she stands with other people.

>I hadn't thought you had
>any dealings with such dark forces, but I guess JoJo has permeated
>Internet culture to such an extent it is practically generic.

I've only encountered it in other things that were riffing on it (like the aforementioned Touhou fan works, some of which explicitly claim that Sakuya is Dio Brando's estranged daughter). Like you say, it's kind of part of a certain corner of fandom's RNA now. Fun fact: I at first thought The World was part of Sakuya's original design, and only discovered after I'd first incorporated it into TTW that it was a second-hand Jojo reference! But I like it, so it got to stay. Besides, I'd put my own spin on it by then. We haven't seen it on screen yet, but Sakuya's The World is called The World because "THE WORLD" is the only legible engraving on the back plate. It used to say

"THE WORLD"
CHRONOVORTECTIC MANIPULATOR CO.
NEW MANHATTAN

but the smaller type is now so worn that it can't be read.

--G.
* I mean they're right, SDM is the source of the disturbance affecting the local area, but as I read the synopsis, the playable characters have no evidence of this until after they've broken into the place and beaten up most of the staff, which is not how due process is meant to work, modern-day American policing notwithstanding.
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