Fanfic / Being Meiling

Being Meiling ^note In case that link doesn't work anymore, here's an archive of the story is a Touhou Project Gamebook fanfic written by Keymaster on the Touhouproject.com forums which ran for ten threads. Keymaster had originally wrote two one-shots, called Being Meiling and Being Meiling at Christmastime, with the same general theme: Meiling, gatekeeper of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, contemplating over her life. This fic, however, branches out from that into a more general Meiling-focused romance/slice-of-life story that explores what goes on behind the scenes in Gensokyo.

After the first story ended, Keymaster wrote two sequels: Pleasant Meadows, and Tengu of (Mis)Fortune, the former a murder/kidnapping mystery from the perspective of a human man Original Character, while the latter focuses on Aya Shameimaru after her judgement sets her with Hina.

---

Tropes:

General Tropes

• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Pleasant Meadows, the second story, is basically this: Hina, Shikieki, Suika, Parsee and a few others go to the Outside World for some companionship, and then shit gets nasty as people get kidnapped in a rather sloppily laid-out brainwashing plot ending with Snark and gap-beasts.
  • Tengu of (Mis)fortune, the third story, is basically Aya picking up the pieces by helping Hina pick up the pieces, and the Aki sisters play a secondary, although major, role. And Sukuna becomes the new shrine's miko.
• Canon Welding: The PC-98 era of games, of ambiguous canon to the main games, is more directly linked in the backstory of this portrayal of Gensokyo. In particular, the events of Touhou Kaikidan ~ Mystic Square is how the Spell Card system came to be, with Reimu wanting to avoid a repeat of Makai's destruction after the battle with Shinki.
• Barely-There Swimwear:
  • As a method of trolling her sister throughout thread five, Flandre of all characters wears this a few times. Then she ropes Reimu in...
  • The Pool Scene in the last post of Being Meiling ends with most of the cast wearing skimpy swimsuits, with the Watatsuki sisters getting roped in for further humiliation.
  • Yukari has assembled an impressive collection of this kind of swimwear for the... festivities at Pleasant Meadows. Notable for being equal-gender, judging from what Eiki threatened Alfred with.
  • Also a common object of fantasy for Aya.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • In the first few threads, Marisa is humiliated by Meiling twice, which culminates in her being forced to marry Pameel, one of the SDM's fairy maids.
  • Nitori, to a lesser extent. First clobbered by DyCirno, then pressed into building mechs for Cirno's friends, with Cirno an unwelcome taskmaster. And unlike her fellow kappa, she's not happy about that.
• The Dreaded: Poor Yuuka just wanted a friend.
  • Yukari has a similarly daunting reputation. She also is much less terrifying in person.
  • Kanako looms over most of the plot of Tengu of (Mis)Fortune as the Mikami's biggest worry. She's defused by affection.
  • Add in the Oni to the Tengu and Youkai in general to humans. Keymaster's Gensokyo is just full of people with scary reputations who are far less scary in person.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Tenma, ruler of the Tengu, has been doing this for centuries. In fact, it's a common problem for older Tengu in general, due to the awful things many of them have done in the past.
  • More amusingly, this is a common response to both nonexistent love lives and unruly subordinates. There's a reason Gensokyo goes through so much alcohol, and it's not just because of the Oni.
  • Less amusingly, Suika does this constantly in Pleasant Meadows after being depowered.
  • In To(M)F, Nitori has been doing this ever since she found out Rinnosuke used her technology to Mind Rape the victims of the Pleasant Meadows incident.
• Flat "What": Frequent, both in dialogue and narration.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Aya fainted when she met the Oni gentlemen (although that's more of Heroic RRoD.) She comes close when she meets a familiar face in Big Papa, but hangs on that time. Sukuna also blacks out at seeing Hina in her new dress.
  • A semi-inversion pops up at the end of Being Meiling, where after the Watatsukis have been utterly shamed, the forest fire fairy Malla goes a tad loopy after donning the Robe of Fire Rat.
  • This is part of what kicks off Aya's madness. After realizing her banishment from the Tengu Village wasn't going the way she thought it would - that she had spent decades alone with no one to talk to and was going to be alone for several more after being denied re-entry into the Tengu Village - she broke down in tears. Probably several times over the years.
  • After the Tengu warriors slaughtered a village full of innocent humans thinking there were hunters there (there weren't), Lord Tenma and likely several other Tengu elders fell into one that lasted centuries.
• Hidden Depths:
  • The reason Aya's been stalking people and taking indecent pictures? After nearly a century of solitude with both humans and youkai unwilling to give her the time of day, it's the only way she knows how to socialize with or get close to anyone prior to Tengu of (Mis)Fortune.
  • The oni in general. Still the boisterous, hard-drinking hard-fighting maniacs everyone knows; also excellent craftsmen who basically rebuild their city daily, and much more decent and self-aware.
  • Patchouli, despite her weak constitution and hermitage tendencies, is both a surprisingly good dancer and is really good at picking up guys.
• Hollywood Board Games: Flandre's canonical Genki Girl personality and the versatility of her powers are highlighted in this fanfic by Flandre deciding to create life-sized Board Games. She even uses fairies as units.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: A frequent response to the antics of Gensokyo.
• Noodle Incident: No one ever figures out how the laughing Oni statue ended up in the Laughing Oni inn. The doors aren't big enough, the walls weren't broken...
• Serial Escalation: A little out of order. Being Meiling lasted ten threads. Tengu of (Mis)fortune? TWENTY.

Being Meiling

• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: One of the problems with the fairy maids. On the plus side, this means a few minutes of understimulation make for a very good punishment.
• Aura Vision: Meiling has the ability to sense whoever is on the premises of the mansion when she's around, allowing her to know when someone (namely Marisa) is intruding.
• Author Tract: The outcome of Meiling's attempt at getting a man results in the one guy she talks to overlooking her in an insensitive fashion by asking about possibly having a shot at one of the other Scarlet Devil members, despite Meiling initially trying to have a shot a him. As confirmed by his response to a few posts, Keymaster takes issue with how often Meiling gets neglected on the thread site this fanfic was posted in, with any chances of getting votes often overshadowed by the other cast members.
  "Bottom line, Meiling needs a lot more love."
• Ax-Crazy: The French general clone of Flandre. Her basic strategy? "KILL EVERYTHING!"
• Badass Normal: Albrecht the bartender, who solves most of his problems by shooting them in the foot.
• Batman Gambit: The entire reason for the Hakurei-Scarlet wedding. Everyone involved knew that Aya would never be able to resist showing up to cover such a grand event, which will draw her to a specific and well-guarded place to be recaptured.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Why Yuuka falls in love with Meiling. Most other people are too busy running in terror in the other direction.
• Beyond the Impossible: Sakuya's attempt to reprimand Meiling for her work ethnic (ie sleeping standing up) getting met with the latter grabbing Sakuya's wrist quickly seems like a straightforward reflex on Meiling's part, but Sakuya also notes she had her time stop enabled when she tried to wake her up, meaning Meiling couldn't have been able to perceive or sense her until they undo their ability, but she still did anyways.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Koishi; she's an unrepentant pervert who only follows her impulses, but her ability to read the subconscious of others and knowledge of how sexuality works helps her to give Meiling some valuable advice in regards to Sakuya and Yuuka.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: As she vents her frustration about the citywide destruction of the Underground that disturbed her peace, Satori notes how the Oni's treatment of said destruction is regarded as just another day in their lives. The way she phrases this may be in reference to the Trope Namer.
  Satori: You know what they would call this in any other city in the world? They would call this a calamity. A disaster of unprecedented proportions. Do you know what the Oni call this? Tuesday.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: Everyone in Gensokyo seems to resort to Drowning Their Sorrows away, with some having a particular problem keeping themselves in check.
  • Flandre can at least stay upright when intoxicated, and her antics in this state consists of philosophical rants, destroying walls, and scathing speeches for certain individuals. But being a Person of Mass Destruction with an unstable personality, who's power is plenty dangerous whenever she's in one of her "moods", drunk Flandre is cause for concern all the same.
  • The satori don't take being drunk too well, as evident by Koishi having accidentally married Shou in a drunken spree because they suddenly wanted tacos.
• Chick Magnet: With his physical attractiveness, bartender-granted ability to listen and dispense sage advice, and proven ability to defend himself, Albrecht would be a prize even without Gensokyo's female-skewed gender ratio. With it? Let's just say it's a good thing Yuugi, an extremely strong Oni, is his girlfriend, and can handle the stick-beating.
• Clothing Switch:
  • Meiling and Sakuya exchanged clothes for when they both Swapped Roles for a day; Meiling in Sakuya's blue and white maid dress, and Sakuya in Meiling's cheongsam attire.
  • While largely a result of an alcohol-induced incident, Meiling wound up in Yuugi's kimono and Yuugi vice-versa, while Shou and Koishi respectively end up each-other's lion robes and green plus yellow clothes. The latter duo naturally got their clothes back after meeting up, while Meiling warmed up to her newfound clothing, asking Yuugi to exchange dresses.
• Epic Fail:
  • The other problem with fairy maids is that with most of them, this is what happens when they try to do anything other than some very specific tasks. More often than not, they'll trash the place in one day.
  • Also, Sakuya's "attempts" at gardening when she and Meiling swap jobs for a day. It starts with getting caught in a thorn bramble, but her repeated attempts at stopping time somehow results in her getting more unkempt and scarred each time.
• Flashback Echo: An Inner Monologue variant; as Meiling deals with Malla wearing the fire-rat robe, from talking her down to getting her to relinquish the artifact, she recalls a memory from long ago having to deal with Flandre, a similarly innocent yet unstable girl who doesn't understand what she's doing is wrong while going through emotional turmoil, in a similar manner with the forest fire fairy.
• Forgot About the Mind Reader: As Meiling thinks to herself about what happened on the night out while drunk, Satori questions her priorities about winning the fight against Yuugi over all the other problems that have possibly happened.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: It takes a lot of force, and application to the right spot on the skull, but it turns out this is a (semi)-reliable way to get Flandre out of one of her "moods".
• Hate Sink: Aya. She's a Immoral Journalist like her Flanderized depiction, but she also develops an unhealthy obsession with Cirno since the latter's DyCirno debut, to the point of outright lusting after her. By the end of the fanfic, she's considered a wanted, unstable criminal. It took another story along with some major Character Development for Aya to redeem herself In-Universe and out.
  Anon: Good job making me want to use balefire on Aya. It takes skill for a writer to evoke emotions in their readers.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Meiling does this frequently in dialogue and her internal narration as Sakuya and Yuuka continue to try and gain her attentions. And the more she does it, the less convincing it becomes.
• Hope Spot: With several other of the Scarlet Devil group's efforts at finding a man going south for several reasons, Meiling's attempt with a guy might've bared fruit, due to her more down-to-earth approach and said guy seemingly shows interest. But then the problem arises when the guy she meets proceeds to ask for a meeting with all the present Scarlet Devil members, leaving Meiling out of picture despite being the first to talk to him.
• Humongous Mecha:
  • In the first thread, Cirno is introduced with a mech made out of magic and ice.
  • A thread later, she goes up against five Kappa mechas.
  • After the Kappa's defeat, she shanghais them into four mechas for her friends. Which can also combine with DyCirno.
• Hypocritical Humor: Tenshi telling the other five girls in their party to the underground that they should be more responsible. Keep in mind, this is the same girl who started a Gensokyo wide incident out of boredom, and at the moment is engaging in a risky game of improvised baseball with her sword and Utsuho's explosive fireballs. Iku does not appreciate this, having needed to be restrained by the others to prevent her throttling the celestial.
• Indy Ploy: A variant; Meiling's advice to Cirno against the Kappa mechas right before their fight: "It's time to use... THAT!" Meiling herself didn't plan anything for "that" to mean anything, at most banking on Cirno knowing what to do in response.
• Innocently Insensitive: The first guy that Meiling talks to during a girls night out seem to show interest in Meiling, even buttering her up with what he knows about her. But then he had to give Meiling's hopes up by asking her to introduce the Scarlet Devil group to him, as if he only talked to Meiling to date the other girls instead. Meiling naturally closes off the conversation with "You're gonna die alone and unloved" after being shafted.
• Insistent Terminology: Big Papa's preaches the tenets of looooooove. Not "love", "looooooove", with seven "o"s.
• Ki Manipulation: Meiling use of ki is not just for her martial arts, its also useful for forcing the body to purge toxins (typically alcohol).
• Large Ham: Big Papa, who spreads the word of LOOOOOOOOVE (and Tacos!)
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: After finally getting a boyfriend, Koakuma indulges in this quite a bit. How much? Well, let's just say she gets a lot of mileage out of her ability to fly.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: Yukari takes interest in DyCirno's efforts and sends her a letter to her of using her for reasons beyond her understanding. Though, because of the language of the letter (being 'special friends'), Cirno assumes she's talking about in the same manner as Aya, which prompts Yukari to write another hastily-made letter denying that assumption and insulting the tengu for good measure.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Flandre creating life-sized boards games as her projects, complete with fairies to assist as the extra units — including Settlers of Catan, Risk, and Battleship.
• Mundane Utility: Sakuya's timestop, unsurprisingly. As Meiling discovers, it's a necessary skill for keeping the Scarlet Devil Mansion intact. It's also handy for quick-changing people.
  • Conjured fusion bombs + legendary sword = kickass baseball game. It's also a good way to cook steak.
• Noodle Implements: In Thread Three, Cirno comes up with an idea on how to defeat, of all people, Yukari, and drags Meiling along to pick up various things, making Meiling wonder what she needs them for.
  • This in turn inspires Meling's assault on the Watatsukis, complete with flammable foam!
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Meiling (and Sakuya), when Yuuka shows up at the mansion at the beginning of the story.
  • Marisa, when Meiling and Sakuya show up at her house, hours after she humiliated the latter.
• Obsessively Organized: When Malla, the marshmallow fairy, is tasked with replanting a chunk of forest she burned down, she plants the trees in neat rows, each with the same tree. All the trees are the same distance apart. Each tree has the same rock patter buried at its base. Her campsite is precise and immaculate. Considering how fairies normally act, the entire thing is rather disturbing.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Albrecht will be forever known as the man who solves all his problems by shooting them in the foot.
• Only Has Same-Sex Admirers: Poor, heterosexual (at first) Meiling has this problem.
• Playing with Fire: Malla has an affinity with setting things on fire, all for the sake of cooking marshmallows.
• Power Perversion Potential: Implied in Meiling's monologue about her sexual activities with Sakuya and Yuuka.
  Meiling: Apparently, stopping time lets Sakuya do some very interesting things. As does Yuuka's plant control.
• Relationship Upgrade: Remilia, after spending much of her life since meeting Reimu holding a strong crush for the shrine maiden, finally closed the gap after a successful date/get together. Unfortunately, they now have to contend with Flandre wanting grand-children.
• Room Full of Crazy: Aya's little "shrine" to Cirno. While the exact extent of the pictures isn't detailed, the implications are... disturbing.
• Running Gag: Drunk Flandre. At first, it was just the young vampire getting into an alcohol stash, but it later developed into a go-to method of dealing with immoral individuals like Aya; Flandre giving them "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Sakuya sees Yuuka in the mansion's front yard with Meiling, she makes a break for it in frozen time. Later, we find out that she was going to get help.
• Swapped Roles: For one day, Meiling and Sakuya takes up the job, duties, and even clothes of each-other. Naturally for Meiling, she finds herself struggling with keeping the maid fairies, cooking, and clean-up in check — daily tasks that Sakuya could take care of no problem with her time-stopping capabilities. Funnily enough, Sakuya has had her own struggles with Meiling's job as a gatekeeper and gardener, particularly the latter with the use of her time-stopping powers.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: In contrast to her common Butt-Monkey portrayal established in the prequel story, Meiling herself gets the opportunity to defy said portrayal by getting back at Marisa via snatching her trinkets to turn the tide.
• Took a Level in Badass: Cirno all the way. From a mid-level annoyance to a top-tier enforcer of Justice throughout Gensokyo! Hell, even her presence takes a few levels in Intimidate.
• Troll: Flandre increasingly becomes one with her personality becoming more stable. Poor Remilia...
• Tsundere: Discussed by Pameel about Marisa, recalling some other fairy maids describing Marisa's attitude toward Pameel as such, which is a fairly accurate assessment by the latter half, considering how she doesn't resort to Master Spark-ing the fairy away and is outright adverse to getting rid of her when Mima offers.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: What Meiling's girls' night out in the underground with Koakuma, Reisen, Shou, Tenshi, and Iku inevitably ends in. The girls spend a good chunk of the fifth thread piecing together what happened.

Pleasant Meadows

• Adaptational Villainy: Rinnosuke, the half-youkai human shopkeeper, who's crime in canon consists of being a Collector of the Strange who operates on Insane Troll Logic, is responsible for the horrendous events the girls go through.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Direct from Pleasant Meadows: "Naturally purple hair? Next to cloning yourself and pulling swords out of thin air, that's positively mundane."
• And Then What?: Asked by Alfred while demanding answers from Rinnosuke. He simply remarks that he hasn't decided yet, and will probably just use the brainwashed women to live a comfortable life.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to the lighthearted romp of Being Meiling and the more bittersweet Tengu of (Mis)Fortune, Pleasant Meadows is anything but pleasant. Standing out as the darkest of the three.
• Didn't See That Coming: Rinnosuke was not expecting Alfred to be there, and badly mishandles his response to this unexpected variable.
• Didn't Think This Through: Even more than Alfred being a Spanner in the Works, this is the main problem with Rinnosuke's plan: how is he supposed to fool the many friends and allies the Touhous he's attempting to brainwash when he gets back to Gensokyo? Which includes Yukari's servant Ran, the Tengu, Reimu, the Goddess of Makai, and the entire goddamn Celestial Bureaucracy.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Alfred lets loose an absolutely blistering one on Rinnosuke at the climax of Pleasant Meadows, tearing apart his plans and outlining in great detail how badly the storekeeper has fucked up, all in a bid to make him Blinded by Rage. It works.
• Spanner in the Works: Alfred. He wasn't supposed to be there and Rinnosuke's responses to his presence are largely what causes his plan to fall apart.
• Temporal Duplication: Due to Rinnosuke's abuse of Yukari's powers, two versions of Alfred end up in the same Gensokyo.

Tengu of (Mis)Fortune

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: This is what Aya's reduced to after her exile finally becomes too much to bear. After already being denied re-admittance into the Tengu Village once after several decades, she spends thirty more years alone before her will finally crumbles, leading her to grovel to the elders to let her back in.
• Character Development: Aya, from a perverted pedophile reporter to a humble tengu, shrine maiden of Mikami Shrine and a seeker of Truth.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Aya, once she starts turning her life around. Alongside helping to solve disputes, bringing other characters out of whatever funk they're in, and convincing the ultra-conservative tengu elders to start opening up, her narration will not fail to mention how good a character looks in a particular outfit.
• The Fog of Ages: Aya explains to Hina and Momiji that it's difficult for her to remember anything from over a thousand years ago, largely due to being feral and her mind not having fully developed yet, similar to an infant or a toddler.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: A large chunk of Aya's current issues can be traced to several decades spent alone with no one to talk to. Not only did it leave her a bit desperate for attention, the story all but states she forgot how to properly socialize. The Tengu elders exacerbated the issue by dangling the promise of interaction to Aya like a lure, which she ultimately refused... but this had the other negative consequence of turning her in to a Cloud Cuckoolander pervert. A horrified Momiji realizes she did go insane after being alone for so long, since both wolves and crows by nature are social animals.
• Hated by All: Aya's status after her Cirno obsession comes to light, on top of her previous behavior. It takes a lot of apologies, explanations, soul-searching, and hard work supporting Hina to reverse it.
• Innocently Insensitive: Futo thinks all youkai are savage beasts who don't know any better, and all but tells Aya this to her face. That aside, she doesn't hold it against her, exactly, taking it as a simple fact of life. Not only that, but she's very polite, even bordering on friendly towards her even as she insults her to her face. She can't imagine why Aya would be so angry over, from Futo's perspective, just stating how things are. Fortunately, she gets better.
• Insane Troll Logic: Being narrated from Aya's point of view, the early parts are chock full of this. It gets better.
• Madonna-Whore Complex: Aya has this in regards to Hina and Yamame. On the one hand, Hina is the one Aya has real romantic feelings for due to helping her get her life back together, but Aya can only see Hina as a pure girl and is afraid that trying to get intimate with her would ruin their relationship. On the other hand, Yamame and her flirtatious nature sets Aya's lust on fire, but she doesn't have the emotional connection with her like she has with Hina and she's afraid that giving into the urge to sleep with Yamame would hurt Hina. Both Satori and Big Papa tell her that this categorization is inherently flawed and she should really just talk about her concerns with the both of them to sort things out. When Aya does, she finds out that Hina has no problems with satisfying her urges in private, and that Yamame has genuine feelings for Aya since her first impression of the spider youkai wasn't abject terror.
• Manipulative Bastard: The tengu elders begin trying to take control of Hatate with visits to her family, encouraging her and gently trying to convince her to change her paper to suit their standards. Aya is horrified, especially since that was the exact way her own madness started - allowing her allegiance to Truth to be compromised by politics and pageantry, and this means the Tengu elders know what is going to happen to Hatate, and they don't care.
• Master Swordsman: Aya, once upon a time. Her passion for her art eventually curdled into utter hate for the blade after acknowledging and attempting to record the dark side of her race, eventually pushing her on the path to madness.
• invoked Nightmare Fuel: An in-universe example; after Futo and Aya make up, they decide to watch Alien together, thinking it's a documentary. It turns out to be an utterly horrifying experience. According to Keymaster, this was based on his experience watching the movie for the first time.
• Noodle Incident: Shanghai Doll takes on the prior personality traits of Alice Margatroid, which result in the former going Yandere, like how Alice is characterized in certain Fanon. According to Alice, she was once like this for Marisa long ago, with no other specification about her her prior characterization and interaction.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Akyuu, Futo, and Tenma all get these from Aya. They reconcile afterwards each time, though.
• The Social Expert: Aya is this even when she is at her craziest. Momiji admits to finding it very disturbing that she can be simultaneously extremely perceptive of others and a total blockhead when thinking of herself.
• Took a Level in Badass: More like Lost Several Levels in Suck. Aya was once the premier tengu badass, to the point of even exceeding Lord Tenma - but eventually, she grew tired of the wanton slaughter and tried to record her race's atrocities. However, by this point, the tengu had begun developing into a more human shape and mindset, and found anything that reminded them of their horrid past utterly distasteful and clashing with the image they had developed, so when Aya refused to sanitize history for them, she was exiled and very nearly went insane. At the Trade Expo, Aya finds the tengu elders trying to keep their people under their thumb and deny them the truth of their history, so she rushes to her blade and reminds everyone that in the end her ultimate devotion is to Truth.
• We Have Become Complacent: The tengu have stagnated into an utterly static society, contrasting with the development of the Underground into a dynamic, functioning city of oni. Part of Aya's ultimate redemption hinges on finding a way of getting them out of it.
• What Is This Feeling?: Two for Aya within the same day:
  • She feels a "strange twinge" in her heart when she watches Nitori and Hina reconcile, which isn't directly identified.
  • When Hina breaks into the bathroom and starts taking pictures of her in the bath (after she'd unhesitatingly declared she'd proudly pose should that exact thing happen) she's genuinely shocked by her feelings of shame and violation, and has to berate herself into actually posing to avoid being a Hypocrite. ^note Posing was a write-in option from readers who felt being openly ashamed would be Out of Character for her at that point.

---