The YMMV page for the Touhou fanfic/CYOA "Being Meiling". Move the YMMV entries here.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Big Papa, the boisterous and enthusiastic marriage officiant/taco chef oni, was a hit among readers. The sequel fic Tengu of (Mis)Fortune would feature him more prominently and develop his backstory.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- Apparently what bothered Rumia the most about being kidnapped by Aya for her darkness abilities was that Aya wouldn't stop talking. Of course, after reading Misfortune and learning about how Aya went mad from nearly a century of social starvation, that little tidbit becomes a bit more tragic, as from her perspective, it's the first opportunity she's had in over a century to have an actual conversation with someone, which is all she's ever really wanted.
- Meiling and Momiji burning down Aya's house in the third Being Meiling thread. At the time, it's a logical "KILL IT WITH FIRE!" reaction to Aya's Cirno Wall. But as Tengu of (Mis)Fortune points out, they burned down her house, which is rather overkill, as it left the later reformed tengu without a home. And Momiji saving her things is counterbalanced by the fact that they could have simply burned down just the Cirno shrine.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Little did they know that it would be Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom that would unveil a previous incident. (Although it was not DDC.)(on the subject of the Watasukis)Anon I'm sure they could be used provided they're made to follow the spirit of the rules, not the letter. Hell, DDC reeks of Lunarian interference.
- Nightmare Fuel:
- Malla the marshmallow fairy going completely bonkers during her punishment for burning a chunk of forest down. The contrast between her behavior and normal fairy behavior is incredibly disturbing.
- Malla getting ahold of the robe of the fire-rat. What was otherwise an innocent yet unstable fairy turned into a force of nature upon gaining power beyond her comprehension.
- Her first action putting Kaguya and Mokou into a perpetually burning state, implied to be an unpleasant experience for the otherwise immortal duo.
- What the fire-robe done to Malla: her hands are now charred to the bone and surrounded in flames, she's surrounded by flames that respond to her unstable emotions, and her psyche is at an all time low - with her fairy-like mentality making her believe that putting everyone on fire makes them happy.
- Poor execution aside, Pleasant Meadows is not a good time for Alfred and the girls. It starts with Yukari's apparent murder and goes downhill from there.
- In-universe, Oni are this for the Tengu. And from the flashbacks we get, for good reason.
- Take That, Scrappy!: The Watatsuki sisters were already much maligned in canon for their zenophobic treatment of those "impure", with Being Meiling also depicting them as straight jerkasses. Needless to say, after their treatment of Reimu and Remilia and their bad-mouthing of the Hakurei-Scarlet marriage, they get subject to quite a bit of karma courtesy of Meiling's elaborate prank of Sensory Abuse, flammable foam, and blackmail in the form of them wearing various fanservice-y outfits.
- Tear Jerker: The end of the scenario with Malla wearing the fire-rat robe, with Meiling invoking a Disney Death to make her come to her senses.
- From the fairy's perspective, she lashes out at Meiling in a temper tantrum state, only to last be met with Meiling's cap atop a pile of ash, making her gradually overcome with guilt at the realization that her idea of happiness just killed someone close to her. Even after she realizes Meiling's okay, she's still riddled with guilt after she respawns back at the mansion.
- From Meiling's perspective, she sees the same in Malla as she once did with Flandre: an innocent girl whose instincts make her lash out against better judgment, with the sight of the fairy crying over Meiling's "death" making her recall the vampire girl at a similar low point.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Hong Meiling in Tengu Of (Mis)Fortune. In the original fic she was more sympathetic, as she served as an Audience Surrogate who's choices were influence by the readers. Contrast to Aya, who was introduced as a Hate Sink — one with a creepy obsession with Cirno that made her comparable to a sex offender. By the sequel, Meiling's Protagonist and reader-influence role was given to Aya, who would develop from an out-of-touch with reality creep to a more rounded and sympathetic character with a troubled backstory, while Meiling would be Locked Out of the Loop — viewing Aya with contempt and skepticism at best over her apparent Heel–Face Turn, with her choice of words and attitude garnering vocal negative reactions from readers, mostly those introduced to Misfortune first. The near-final chapter would attempt to address this — having Meiling learn of Aya's side of the story while apologizing to them.
- Aya herself remained unsympathetic to quite a few readers, particularly veterans of Being Meiling, who saw her Tragic Backstory as a clumsy Retcon and felt that her positive actions didn't outweigh the vileness of her expressing sexual interest in a functional child.
- The Woobie:
- Anyone involved in Pleasant Meadows that hasn't been able to fully move on.
- Aya in Tengu of (Mis)Fortune when we find out that she's one of the oldest Tengu in Gensokyo and has seen a lot of bloodshed and tragedy, along with the Tengu's attempts to hide their mistakes and control their society. Since being outcast for her reporting ways, she was once forced to spend decades, nearly a century, in exile with literally no one to talk to.
