So, I'm going to throw a bit of a different question into the ring here...

Should fanfiction make an effort to be accessible to people who don't know the source material? I ask this because I actually got a real life friend to read (most of) my story, and his feedback was essentially that he couldn't really get into it because he needed to look so much stuff up to actually follow along.

Like, I'd taken for granted that anyone who would ever look at my story would already know who Reimu was, what spellcards and danmaku are, and so on and so forth... and then someone without that background tried to read it and found it inaccessible. But at the same time, I still think that the vast majority of people who look at my writing will already be fans of Touhou in some capacity, and for those people trying to re-describe what a kappa is would be wasted time.

I suppose with better writing this doesn't need to be a dilemma (particularly given I have an outsider main character who's just meeting all of these youkai for the first time), but I'm curious if you guys have thought about this in your own stories, and if so, how did you choose to handle it?

>>18075
Over-explaining background information is certainly not the way to go, and really, I say don't worry about it. Naturally, some ideas are more dependant on broader context than others, but the kind of fanfic idea that really requires having that context (an AU where the plot goes in a different direction, a rewritten unsatisfactory ending, a character reflecting on in-story events, etc) wouldn't be read by any fandom outsiders anyway, unless it's, like, also porn, so don't worry about it. It's fanfiction, it's by fans and for fans. You certainly should not be re-describing what a kappa is - people have search engines at their disposal, after all.

>>18075
>I still think that the vast majority of people who look at my writing will already be fans of Touhou in some capacity
That may be the case, but how many will have intimate familiarity with every possible aspect of Touhou? Some people haven't even played the games. Some people might not have read the print works. Some people may be very casual fans. And so on and so on. Of course, limiting an audience to those 'in the know' is a choice any writer can make. Still, in general, what's obvious to oneself is not necessarily obvious to others; avoiding hard assumptions about what others do and don't know is typically better than not.

I've spoken about this elsewhere, but I'll just repeat for the sake of discussion: I think the biggest common sin of fanfiction is assuming investment in particular things by default. Writing under heavy assumptions that every reader agrees with the writer's interpretations of characters, character relationships, etc. and feeling that simply mentioning them suffices is mistaken in my mind. Anything Touhou is subject to interpretation on some level, and it really does behoove a writer to do what they can to 'earn' the audience's buy-in on those things. That means being willing to dedicate the time and space to establishing what it is that the audience ought to know to grasp the story in some fashion.

So, in the end, I at least can only answer the question with more questions: Who do you want as far as an audience? What is it that you think they should know? Why do you want that audience as opposed to another? What is it that you think that audience will get from your writing? Et cetera.

Either implicitly or explicitly, those are the sorts of questions one has to answer for oneself in writing, and they do affect things one way or another, noticeable or otherwise.

I think good writing should be able to stand more or less on its own without requiring too much buy-in in terms of context. This doesn't mean that readers who know more shouldn't, perhaps, be able to appreciate further layers in a work but I think that you ought to be able to present a story to someone who is completely unfamiliar with a given subject matter and they can still appreciate it on its own merits. I can't say I'm the best writer but I have shown off a couple of the things I've written and posted on THP to people who haven't the faintest thing what Touhou is and they were able to read and enjoy them. Ideally, you should be able to make people appreciate characters and their relationships, get into the plot, enjoy themes and imagery etc. without having to depend on the crutch of familiarity and bias.

This should seem obvious If you've ever read a "classic" written decades or centuries before, a foreign book, historical fiction, speculative fiction, or something about a subject matter you weren't familiar with and enjoyed it—it seems likely that these works will have made it clear to the reader what it is that actually matters for its narrative in terms of cultural norms, jargon, technology, and suchlike. The more you read and think about it, the more you should notice different storytelling techniques in fiction and how it seldom requires the reader to bring outside knowledge to enjoy.

In a more practical sense, I'd say that making a dynamic understood with a character is more important than, say, an info dump regarding kappa. You can explain and describe over the course of an entire story—here and there if you choose—and have what's relevant be clear when it needs to be clear for the sake of storytelling. Like, you can show things like youkai-ness or the importance of Reimu to Gensokyo as the story goes along. Don't lean in to too much jargon from the get-go or make things contingent on understanding too many things beforehand; it makes for poor writing overall and I'd agree with a lot with what >>18077 says about interpretations and assumptions; even if people don't see that as a barrier they will still bring their own baggage (often to the detriment of the story).

I strongly disagree with the notion that you should just assume that it's fanfiction and that that somehow excuses what is, essentially, shoddy storytelling or that readers are to be expected to do their own research to even be able to get into a work. It's still fiction in the end and therefore subject to the same range of critiques.

I think that's about what can be said without resorting to specific examples.

>>18077, >>18078
I think that's all pretty fair. If/when I ever get around to actually editing my story for crossposting elsewhere, I'll keep it all in mind and try to make the story a bit more self-contained.

And frankly, it'll be good practice if I ever get around to writing fully original fiction. I'd need to be able to integrate descriptions of the world and whatever unique creatures/magic system/etc. into the narrative there, so getting practice with this is probably a good call.

>>18078
Yeah, this post sums up the majority of what I wanted to say but couldn't with >>18077 because I was too zeroed-in on the subject of audiences.

In particular:
>You can explain and describe [...] and have what's relevant be clear when it needs to be clear for the sake of storytelling. Like, you can show things like youkai-ness or the importance of Reimu to Gensokyo as the story goes along.

I think it bears emphasising that storytelling is the real issue here. In my opinion, it's often easy for people in shared contexts such as these to get hung up on the subject of the story, often to the detriment of storytelling as an act. Granted, that kind of circles back to my whole point about investment-by-default, but...

>specific examples
Not that it's strictly necessary, but I would just like to cite Madeline Miller's Circe as an example here. It is in some respects fanfiction in its own way, using Hellenic myth as the backdrop and vehicle for a story. Separate of any merits of the story itself, the novel succeeds in making sure the audience doesn't need to be as well-researched as its author. For instance, even if one had never read The Odyssey in any of its sundry translations, that's immaterial to knowing who Odysseus, his men, his family, and others are. What's important is that Odysseus is a monomaniac drunk on his own (unknowingly transient and conditional) import to certain gods. Does it add layers of enjoyment to know and recognise these things? Absolutely. Miller is well-read in Greek myth and includes a lot of material in her narrative, ultimately using those foundations to flesh out the backgrounds of otherwise unnoticeable figures in common tellings. I mean, Circe herself is a pretty incidental figure in the grand scheme of The Odyssey, after all. I don't mean to turn this into a book review, but I would say that reading something like Circe would serve many well to see the sort of mindset that serves well in adapting existing material to one's own narrative.

>>18075
Ultimately fanfiction is fiction written by and for fans. If it's legible to non-fans that's nice, but it's a bad idea to spend a lot of time rehashing basic concepts of the series that will just bore people who are already familiar. It's nice if you can work in some explanations in a way that isn't boring, but that's not always possible for us mere mortal writers...

Look at the official manga for a guideline. In something like Forbidden Scrollery, characters and references to game events show up all the time with little to no introduction. If you tried to read Forbidden Scrollery without knowing anything about Touhou, you'd be very lost most of the time. It works because it's for people who are familiar with Touhou. It's all about knowing your audience.

>>18083
Most things you do on the macro level in storytelling, you also do on the micro level. In this case, establishing what you're talking about before you talk about it is just, well, basic storytelling sense and certainly nothing unattainable by less than gods of writing. Even that aside, it's really not that hard to include incidental details that clue in observant readers to things they need to know in an economical way. It's certainly not necessary to engage in 'infodumping' if anything explained isn't really of relevance, audience consideration or no.

>>18083
>rehashing basic concepts of the series that will just bore people who are already familiar
See, my comment here is... why feel the need to stick so closely to those basic concepts in the first place? I mean, why is it an assumption that Reimu is going to show up, or that spellcards will be used or that danmaku will be fired off? It's fanfiction, of course, but it's fan fiction, not fan novelisation... You can absolutely write stories starting from the assumption that people won't know much about the series, and still avoid boring out the existing fans, simply by not going over the same familiar old things in the first place—exposition given or no! Or by casting those familiar things in a new light that existing fans can appreciate just as much as people new to the series.

Basically, I don't think it's a matter of "knowing your audience"... They're your goals, rather, and if they're unambitious then that's fine, but you should own up to them whatever they are, and not simply say, "oh, it's my audience who isn't interested in hearing this"...

>>18085
What if not "Reimu with danmaku" but "Reimu with a gun"

>>18086
Cute! But would that be effective at all? I mean, it is Gensokyo. I don't think a regular outside world bullet is any better than the intentionally generally harmless danmaku-gokko againtst a youkai...

>>18085
At some point, if you're changing up everything, you're just writing original fiction. Which is fine! But the reason to write Touhou fanfiction in the first place is to put some of those "same familiar old things" in your story. Otherwise it's no more Touhou fanfiction than it is Doctor Who fanfiction or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fanfiction.

One thing you can do in writing fanfiction is to change parts of the setting, to explore how things might be different if e.g. the kappa were the main power on Youkai Mountain. Of course you'll have to explain the new power relations in your version of the setting. But it will still be set against a backdrop of the other setting details which you won't want to spend a lot of time explaining in detail. This is one of the things fanfiction is good at, changing one thing and seeing what the ripple impacts are relative to canon. But that depends on an audience that is somewhat familiar with canon in the first place, to understand what's changing.

>>18088
There's many things in between "writing original fiction" and "rehashing canon" and I don't think anyone has suggested changing up everything ... or even most things. Making something accessible to different audiences, showing character dynamics in an interesting way, and overall making the presentation not boring and the prose engaging is something that seems unrelated to that, anyhow.

>>18085
I'll agree and add that you can certainly have a good story without those iconic things or by giving them a twist. Knowing what to explain, how, and when to your audience is part of the challenge of writing. Framing what you want to share with a story/idea/dynamic/etc as a matter of goal can be helpful in figuring those things out.

>>18089
I, for one, suggest changing all aspects of Touhou. Let's throw out the entire setting of Gensokyo and replace it with Reimu and others living as flatmates in present-day Tokyo. Based on a list of anime tropes, all characters will be assigned characteristics and backstories at random. We will collectively consult the I-Ching for guidance as to plot.

>>18088
Eh, when'd I suggest changing anything up? What I'm saying is you have a choice when it comes to what the scope of your story is going to be. You're not forced to mimic the same kinds of conflicts that you see in the mainline games; you're not forced to assume the same scales, the same stakes, or the same pacing and attitude towards conflict that people tend to reach for as like a fanfiction-ey default. There's plenty that you can explore when it comes to the kappa on Youkai Mountain without needing to change up their position in the "power structure"—there are plenty of specific details that you can develop, in order to make it worthwhile even for someone who "already" "knows" what the kappa are like; there's plenty of room for bringing to life what's "already" "established" by canon; and really there's plenty to write about without ever once having to mention Reimu or spellcards or any of those things that you might worry about having to "rehash".

And after all that, if you want to change a few things, then why not? I'm just saying, like... there are different species of story to be told. Ones that aren't just a function of which simple permutation of "already" "known" elements you happen to be enacting. There are (at least) 24 hours a day and 365 days a year in any given 2hu's life, and they're certainly not all spent duelling...

>>18087
I apologize for delayed reply. It is not a matter of "is it effective" because the writer can always make up something to make it effective. It IS a matter of "is a Touhou with a gun a RAW OPTION FOR SECURING INDEPENDENCE AND FUTURE FROM VILE YOUKAI HANDS USING SUFFICIENTLY HIGH CALIBER AMMUNITION".

>>18091
>You're not forced to mimic the same kinds of conflicts that you see in the mainline games; you're not forced to assume the same scales, the same stakes, or the same pacing and attitude towards conflict that people tend to reach for as like a fanfiction-ey default.
Not to pile on too much, but I'd say that the the official manga actually illustrate that point pretty well. Most of them (a recent shonenshitty exception aside...) don't amount to anything on the scale, urgency, or basic character of the games. It's not even that contingent on the reader to know much of anything about the characters involved or the setting, since that's not really the point. Knowing nothing, you can probably surmise, say, that Sanae and Reimu are supposed to have a rival-adjacent sort of relationship within the one chapter of Wild and Horny Hermit where they get in a little playground fight over alcohol — one of the few times it's that relevant to anything going on. Does it matter that they're miko? Not really. Does it matter who Kanako and Suwako are? Not especially. Do we even have to know why Reimu is throwing parties? Not at all. The focus is largely on Sanae trying to pull out a zinger on Reimu. And a lot of the manga are like this; they're practically fanfiction of a sort already.

>>18093
It sounds like everyone agrees that the official manga has the right amount of background explanation to put in your fanfic, we just disagree about how effective it actually is for readers unfamiliar with Touhou. The manga doesn't do what I would consider the main thing to avoid, which is going into background explanations that just rehash what a tuned-in fan would already know. If you think unfamiliar readers can figure it out even if you don't do that, great.

>>18094
That's... not the point of what I said? I was agreeing with much of >>18091, in particular the quoted portion.