The World, Upside Down
is a Touhou Project fan fic by the user Unmoving Great Library.
This Gensokyo is not the original, but the result of somebody's failed attempt to rewrite existence.
This reality is broken, and soon it will fall apart.
In the weeks before that happens, shrine maiden Yukari Hakurei, ordinary magician Alice Kirisame, time-stopping maid Rin Izayoi, half-phantom swordswoman Komachi Konpaku, and living goddess Hatate Kochiya must either find a solution, or make their peace with whatever happens next.
Tropes:
- Alternate Universe: Takes place in an alternate universe caused by Shinmyoumaru wishing upon the Miracle Mallet to change Gensokyo directly instead of using the Mallet's power to empower various youkai and creating more tsukumogami like in Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character proper.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: It takes knowing that their reality has barely a week left to exist to finally get Hatate to ask Komachi out.
- Apocalypse How: Gensokyo's history has been clumsily rewritten, and the contradictions are going to cause its collapse in short order.
- Batman Gambit: Yukari uses one of these to flush out the perpetrator by holding a fake festival in which people will be given the option to leave Gensokyo, counting on them not wanting to stick around in an unstable, collapsing reality. It works.
- Bittersweet Ending: Gensokyo is fixed, but everyone from the alternate Gensokyo is gone forever.
- Book Ends: The epilogue starts with Reimu looking at the leak in the shrine's roof that Yukari was contemplating at the start of the story.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Yukari indulges in a set of byzantine calculations to work out how long she has to delay fixing the leak in her roof.
- Caught in the Ripple: The story starts out with Yukari Hakurei contemplating whether or not fix a leak in her shrine.
- Civil War: Gensokyo devolves into this as the anomalies become larger, as the elder Tengu push to gain control of the changes, but it dies down as it becomes increasingly obvious that there is no easy solution they can fight over.
- Demoted to Extra: The usual cast of incident resolvers (Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya, Youmu, and Sanae) are barely present in this story, their roles having been taken by their alternate universe counterparts (Yukari, Alice, Rin, Komachi, and Hatate).
- Eldritch Location: The inside of the reality anomalies, especially Shining Needle Castle. Inside each anomaly, various realities are all fighting each other to assert themselves, which manifests as the environment rapidly swapping from one reality to another. This also applies to anyone who enters them, resulting in characters seeing themselves perform the same action dozens of times in slightly different ways, or suddenly becoming different versions of themselves. Komachi is unsettled after just a couple of minutes, Alice is left questioning her sanity after spending several hours wading through one, and Shinmyoumaru is left catatonic for a while after being stuck in one for a couple of weeks.
- Everyone Has Standards: Kanako is loyal to the Tengu in the new reality, but even she knows that allowing the Elders to get their hands on the Mallet and Shinmyoumaru is a recipe for disaster, and leaks the information the heroines need to attack the Tengu Village to get it and Seija out.
- Good Is Not Nice: Yukari, despite acting in Gensokyo's best interests, is perfectly willing to use lies and manipulation to get what she wants, even on her allies.
- Good with Numbers: Yukari, even in this world, maintains her skill at mathematics. Without putting any real effort, she calculates the rate of water flow through a leak in her roof and how much time it will take to damage the floor beneath to work out how long she can postpone actually fixing it.
- Gratuitous French: Rin adopted the use of French to better fit her mental image of how a maid should be.
- Just Before the End: Roughly the last quarter of the story is spent showing the characters making peace with the fact that their reality will cease to exist in a matter of days.
- Make Wrong What Once Went Right: The reason for the swap is that Seija convinced Shinmyoumaru to try using the Miracle Mallet to turn the social order of Gensokyo on its head. Things didn't quite work how she expected.
- Manipulative Bastard: Yukari, as per usual. However due to being less experienced and having fewer resources, her schemes have a much higher tendency to piss off her allies.
- Opportunistic Bastard:
- The elder Tengu. The instant they realize there's a Reality Warper device in Gensokyo, they immediately begin drafting plans to seize it and use it themselves, uncaring of the damage it's already threatening to inflict.
- Seija. She keeps trolling and insulting Alice in an attempt at gathering enough hate to empower herself and turns on her erstwhile allies on a dime.
- Opposites Attract: Awkward, nerdy Hatate finds herself attracted to the tomboyish, outgoing Komachi.
- Other Me Annoys Me:
- Rin has a lot of trouble swallowing that she's supposed to be a cat. Her kassha self has as much problems with being a human.
- Satori, who has taken Remilia's place, isn't particularly thrilled by the idea of becoming a satori, either.
- Perky Goth: Rin is very flirtatious and outgoing, not being at all shy about her relationship with Alice. She also has a skull collection, and thinks Former Hell would be a fantastic place to live once she actually sees it.
- Ret-Gone: The ultimate fate of the alternate Gensokyo and all its inhabitants is to be retconned out once the original Gensokyo is restored.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Akyu Kamishirasawa is the only one able to remember the original Gensokyo due to her unique powerset, and is the one to inform everyone of what's happened. She's also almost the only person who will remember the alternate Gensokyo after things return to normal.
- Yukari actually tries to take advantage of this by helping Akyu prepare a special edition of the Gensokyo Chronicle, in order to leave a record of the alternate Gensokyo's existence after they're gone.
- Shinmyoumaru also uses the Miracle Mallet one last time to grant the main characters a limited form of this when they return to the original Gensokyo.
- The Rival: In contrast to Reimu and Marisa's Friendly Rivalry, Yukari and Alice's relationship is a lot less healthy.
- Role Swap AU: The main premise of this story. Several of Gensokyo's major factions have had their roles traded off:
- The Hakurei shrine is swapped with Yukari Yakumo's household. This puts Yukari in Reimu's role, Ran as the Hakurei god, and Chen as an apprentice goddess. Meanwhile, Reimu takes up Ran's role, while the Hakurei god takes Yukari's role in absentia.
- The Scarlet Devil Mansion, Eientei, and Chireiden have been rotated with each other. The Scarlet Devil Mansion's residents are now at Eientei, the Lunarians are now in the Palace of the Earth Spirits, and the residents of Chireiden are now in the Scarlet Devil Mansion.
- The Ministry of Right and Wrong is swapped with Hakugyokuro.
- The goddesses of the Moriya shrine are swapped with Touhou's three named tengu: Aya, Momiji, and Hatate.
- The Taoists and the Buddhists are also swapped.
- Rubber-Band History: The reason for the reality anomalies is that the new reality is in a metaphorical tug-of-war with the original reality.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Upon realizing the what the great tengu's plans are for the Miracle Mallet, Kanako decides to start secretly helping Yukari get it back from them.
- Signs of the End Times: Glowing blue anomalies in reality are appearing throughout Gensokyo. It starts with a wobbling flower pot, that eventually explodes into shards of multiple items of ceramic because all the different versions of the same object are struggling to become "real". As things get more unstable, the anomalies get bigger.
- Sore Loser: Alice, even moreso than in canon thanks to taking Marisa's role in this reality.
- Vegetarian Vampire: Koishi doesn't like having to drink blood, so Rin has to subtly sneak it into her food.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Once Seija is freed from the tengu's custody, she disappears for the rest of the story without a trace.
