What was the Dolls of Pseudo Paradise all about?

[SeroVich]

It is a dark and grim story for a touhou CD stories, even compared to the pessimism of Trojan Green Asteroid. So, what's going on in the story, and how was your reaction to it when you read the Comiket 62 version of the story?

[CyberAngel]

On a meta level, I think it shows that ZUN wanted to go for a far more grimdark setting for Touhou after a post-PC98 reboot. The early windows games do have a bit creepy vibe and a real sense of danger to their incidents. Also he was obviously still under impression from reading the Agatha Christie works since the story is quite a dead ringer for And Then There Were None.

In universe, I think this was supposed to be Alice's background. Probably some event that either let her become a magician or got her into Gensokyo (or both). "Pierrot" might refer to someone wearing colorful clothes, and Alice does refer to herself as "Seven-Colored Puppeteer", despite wearing a pretty plain dress. Also, since she runs past a shrine maiden at the end, that explains why she's familiar with Reimu and not Marisa in PCB (and not because of PC-98 events).

[SeroVich]

On a meta level, I think it shows that ZUN wanted to go for a far more grimdark setting for Touhou after a post-PC98 reboot. The early windows games do have a bit creepy vibe and a real sense of danger to their incidents. Also he was obviously still under impression from reading the Agatha Christie works since the story is quite a dead ringer for And Then There Were None.

Huh... I'm now interest what direction would ZUN take if he actually made it more obviously dark. But that man is too drunk to make the series too dark, lol.

In universe, I think this was supposed to be Alice's background. Probably some event that either let her become a magician or got her into Gensokyo (or both). "Pierrot" might refer to someone wearing colorful clothes, and Alice does refer to herself as "Seven-Colored Puppeteer", despite wearing a pretty plain dress. Also, since she runs past a shrine maiden at the end, that explains why she's familiar with Reimu and not Marisa in PCB (and not because of PC-98 events).

I don't really agree Alice was the culprit of the murder of the 8 Honest Men, because I think that would be a wild, WILD out-of-character thing from her, since she's known to be normal and civilized towards humans. I would like to think it is an original character ZUN made, probably based on the black dressed lady who holds something that looks like a Cross.

[Suspicious person]

DiPP discussions kinda appears every now and then, and we kinda have one on this here forum here
https://www.shrinemaiden.com/index.php?topic=175.0

I don't really agree Alice was the culprit of the murder of the 8 Honest Men, because I think that would be a wild, WILD out-of-character thing from her, since she's known to be normal and civilized towards humans. I would like to think it is an original character ZUN made, probably based on the black dressed lady who holds something that looks like a Cross.

As far as Alice's characterization goes, PCB kinda come from a time where 2hus are relatively more edgy, where they not only spew threats or death threats quite casually, but also straight up mention eating humans. Alice's nice and well mannered characterization kinda comes later, but before that I wouldn't be surprised if ZUN had some secret edgy ideas about her, even moreso if its for a backstory.

I think that there are too many parallels that can be drawn between Alice and the beautiful one (if we go by my theory on the linked thread anyway + various evidences also in linked thread) to suggest that DiPP *COULD* have been a story that was intended to secretly serve as an Alice backstory of sorts (why else would this music CD be associated with the series, soundtrack and all ?),  but the simple and unfortunate fact that there's no official confirmation from ZUN just leave it to the state of a mere fan theory, so now it's just an isolated murder story.

[Vance_croowa_08]

DiPP discussions kinda appears every now and then, and we kinda have one on this here forum here
https://www.shrinemaiden.com/index.php?topic=175.0
As far as Alice's characterization goes, PCB kinda come from a time where 2hus are relatively more edgy, where they not only spew threats or death threats quite casually, but also straight up mention eating humans.

True. Touhou used to be obnoxiously edgy in the 2000s, with characters spewing the most psychotic and disturbing sentences known to man out of nowhere and generally being awful. It seems that this edgy era kinda died down in 2010s, maybe because ZUN realized that being edgy wasn't considered cool anymore, or maybe because he realized that making every character a mentally unstable A-hole wasn't gonna cut it. Although the occasional deranged statements are still here

[SeroVich]

True. Touhou used to be very edgy in the 2000s, with characters spewing the most psychotic and disturbing sentences known to man out of nowhere lmao. It seems that this edgy era kinda died down in 2010s, maybe because ZUN realized that being edgy wasn't considered cool anymore, or maybe because he realized that making every character a mentally unstable A-hole wasn't gonna cut it. Although the occasional deranged statements are still here

I am interested of how edgy Touhou was in its earlier years on the Windows era, even if it means derailing the thread. Give any examples?

[Vance_croowa_08]

I am interested of how edgy Touhou was in its earlier years on the Windows era, even if it means derailing the thread. Give any examples?

LONG WALL OF TEXT AHEAD!

Alright fam, here are some examples of characters saying/doing awful things that i remember (keep in mind that these examples are only from the first Windows era and early portion of the second era, back when Touhou was going through its awful "edgy period". this stuff didn't stop there though, i can argue that it actually got worse):

- Nazrin mentioning something about how her mice love human meat (UFO)

- Reimu threatening to tear Reisen's skin off (IN)

- Reimu assaulting a random harmless youkai for no reason other than stealing her book (Marisa later attacked her as well) (CoLA chapter 1-2)

- Reimu verbally abusing Kogasa for no reason (UFO)

- Yukari abusing Ran and then defending said abuse when Aya (y'know it's bad when someone like Aya is disgusted by you) calls her out (BAiJR interview with Yukari)

- Komachi saying that nobody will care if Reimu commits suicide (PoFV)

- Sakuya threatening to kill Chen (i think) (PCB)

- Reimu generally being an insensitive A-hole who only cares about herself and nothing else (literally almost every game and print work featuring Reimu)

- Koishi threatening to kill Marisa and decorate the palace with her guts (SA)

- Eirin being portrayed as an evil and abusive person in that Reisen manga (to be fair, this one doesn't exactly count cuz the manga isn't canon and ZUN wasn't involved in the writing process)

- other examples i probably missed

-Dishonorable mention: Reimu gleefully MURDERING a random nobody just because he turned into a youkai (this isn't from Touhou's early years but i wanted to include it to highlight just how goddamn stupid this is to me. Couldn't she have just, i dunno forcefully turned him back into a human? And she killed him for a lame motive too, if it really was a "great sin" to become a youkai then i imagine the guy would have gotten punished in some other way, maybe judged by the Yama? Does Reimu have the authority to punish people who commit "great sins" by literally executing them? I think not. Where's Eiki when you need her?!? I'm definitely missing something here, but this just goes to show that Reimu doesn't have a problem with killing people)

This is my main gripe with Touhou as a whole, Reimu in particular. She tends to act like an awful person and does awful things without ever facing any consequences (the only thing she got was a slap on the wrist from Eiki) because almost everyone else is either apathetic or just as bad as her

I'm so glad that ZUN killed this era, but Reimu is still the same albeit more calm. But hey i'm not the one who writes the 2hus so i'll have to deal with it

I used to dislike the Fanon for bastardizing the characters and turning them into one-dimensional Anime archetypes, but SOMETIMES it arguably does a better job at characterizing the 2hus than the Canon does, at least not everyone is a borderline psychotic sociopath
 
EDIT: i may have exaggerated about the last part, but that's how they appear to me most of the times

[Branneg Xy]

"Dolls (primarly the 6 "honest men and secondarily the 7th "honest woman","ironic and fake honesty" but" thruthfully long-term dishonesty and thievery") IN Pseudo Paradise"as far as I am able to understand,explain,communicate revolves around the The Theme(s)of "Mysterious and Potentially Dangerous Pseudo https://www.betterwordsonline.com/dictionary/Paradises, Mysteries and Dangers and Passages-to-from feality to Fantastic-Realities mixed especially linked to Unauthorized,Recklessness,Illusion and Disillusion,Self-Serving,Passages,Squatting,Dishonesty ..."

On the more unrelated ,almost all about the earliest Windows Era,Touhou's criticism.
- The "differences in Touhou temperament,behaviour,atmosphere,and related" between ,but also to a more relative degree between "PC-98 era and Windows Era,"first earlier Windows era and later-on Windows era is meant to underline "different times and stages of adaption(s) to' The New and Recent'(In-between the Vampire incident and Embodiment of Scarlet Devil)and 'The Gradually More and More Familiar(Mountain of Faith and onwards)' ".
- These differences and underlines are also meant  regarding"the particular times,stages,periods,and the like" ,which are the same "Preparations-to,Incidents,Unrests,Aftermaths",whereas the Printworks,and to a lower degree the Fighting and Supplementary Games,are meant to depict "the mostly-general,common,typical lives".
- "Inaba of the Earth and the Moon" is indeed demi-canon,and not fully canon,and is meant as a mostly-comedic print-work.
- "Incidents and the rarer Youkai Unrests" are more of less necessities but nonetheless they do carry over a sense of unease,bother,inconviniences,"Incidents and Unrests" and the like otherwise they would not be such.
- (As far as Single PrintWorks are concerned ones)The passage-period-stage-difference-underline and so on is also,please orgive me please if I  am sort of recycling these terms, underlined and makes a difference inalthough Touhouweiki.net is not the only translated/translation-seeking source,in (Hieda no Akyuu's) gensokyo Chronicle https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Perfect_Memento_in_Strict_Sense/Monologue and https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Symposium_of_Post-mysticism/Afterword_by_Hieda_no_Akyuu .
- Among Single PrintWorks https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Curiosities_of_Lotus_Asia
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Strange_Creators_of_Outer_World/Who%27s_Who_of_Humans_%26_Youkais ; nevertheless be aware that inside the latter PrintWork there are a realtively low number of mistakes,in both Japanese and the Translated languages, to be corrected like "Morichika Rinnosuke's species is mistakenkly Human instead of the correct Half-Human-Half-Youkai(Outsider)";"Nagae Iku "main place of activity being mistakenly  Higan instead the correct Among/in-between (Heaven's) Clouds ; the personality of "Remilia Scarlet" uses the mistaken term "Cruelty" insted of the correct one "Curiosity" ; others...?

[williewillus]

I don't remember the exact occasion but I remember ZUN saying in an interview within the past couple years that he doesn't really do mystery novels anymore or something?? So maybe it was just a phase.

But on the other hand, CDS exists, so....

[Vance_croowa_08]

I don't remember the exact occasion but I remember ZUN saying in an interview within the past couple years that he doesn't really do mystery novels anymore or something?? So maybe it was just a phase.

Yeah, Touhou has been through a lot of phases. The PC-98 era was a weird one. It was back when ZUN didn't really know what do with his world, the characters weren't very fleshed out also you get all the 4th wall breaks and the introduction of several iconic characters like Yuuka, Alice and Mima