Pretty interesting topics to talk about.

Hard work & Reimu

On hard work versus Reimu, I think there's a dimension in Reimu's character that hard work and its transformative nature is just not compatible with : Reimu is free spirited, open, VERY laid back and honest, but more importantly EXTREMELY talented and lucky : she has always managed to get by and largely succeed in her Shrine Maidening activities by just falling back on these two traits, and for her success is just a matter of seriously putting her mind to it.

Reimu's older characterization made her like this "youkai-like Shrine Maiden" that was distant, mystical, hard to understand and the like, almost almighty in her constant stream of successes and seeming like she's beloved by the world itself in her absurd fortune (good old fish bridge) : print works however have largely contributed to tearing down that veil of mysticism : we have this impetuous, impatient, almost immature girl who can be quite brash and half assed : kinda human. Reimu has always managed to comfortably fall back on her talent and luck in order to get by when it matters most, and is generally quite confident on herself and her capabilities : hard work just seems like extraneous tiring and uneccessary effort for supposedly improving her chances at doing what she does best :

In WaHH's chapter 5 for example, where Reimu gets dragged for training with Kasen, Komachi basically remarks that the attempt at improving Reimu through training basically achieves nothing, cuz Reimu didn't have the kind of personality traits that would get straightened up by discipline. Another way I understood that is that, likewise, the training didn't particularly enrich Reimu in any meaningfull way : this is just Reimu's nature. In a similar vein, that's also kinda what I think about SSiB's god powers training and TH 15.5's slave-master fighting style training : an expeditive endeavor for the purpose of the time (Yukari's arrangements for the first, the resolution of the incident for the second) that was forced on her by the circumstances : she tries hard enough on a need-to basis imo.

Whatever Reimu seriously needs, she'll somehow gets. Hard work is just an extra hassle that is unneccessary for her imo. I think as far as the "heartwarming message goes", it's not about the hard work for Reimu, but her nature as a person that matters. It kinda feels to me like it's the way goodness and innocence tend to get portrayed in Japanese Shounen media, with the trope of the dumb but good natured guys like Goku, who could ride the nimbus cloud, or Luffy, who didn't get affected by Boa's powers, while villains or even villainouss characters are smart, cunning and calculated like Naraku from Inuyasha or Light Yagami from Death Note : dumb & naive but sincere and honest has virtue, and sometimes having the correct attitude is half the work. While I don't think that Reimu's is a hard-work & working for self improvement type (and definitely not fit most of the tropes associated with typical shonen protagonist characters), she's got a certain "purity" about her : she's simple minded (and can be kinda dumb), goes with the flow, has desires and worldlyness about her (but not to the point of obsessions), and is quite open and doesn't discriminate against anyone. She's got a good nature that attracts people and youkai alike, and rather than a super competent protagonist with savviness and trickeries, I think that giving the priority to one's good, sincere nature and heart is pretty alright too : after all, everybody's got a heart (sustaining hard work and discipline can arguably derive from that too)

Fortune

Fortune is still one of the aspects of Touhou lore that I find kinda complicated, and even CoLA's chapter 27 doesn't bring complete satisfication to me as we have new and more modern elements that plays off this topic too. The big question that wasn't asked nor answered by the chapter to me is this : why would fortune try to favor Reimu as the end-all-be-all ? Cuz a clear answer to that question may solve the topic entirely for me.

Before getting back to that, the use of Reimu's puffing herself with her own words in the analysis (+ the dice roll thingy) is pretty interesting to me, as it reminds me of Sagume, whose words causes fate itself to reverse (if we go by her TH15 dialogue lines) when she speaks, obviously the complete opposite of Reimu and her dice results : if the memory layer of the world remembers her words and do its utmost to attain the exact opposite result of what she says every single time, then the karma explanation just doesn't become enough : how does a distant heavenly goddess that lives on the pure moon attain and maintain the kind of karma that gives a perfectly consistent result, especially since other residents of the place of similar nature and similar circumsstance don't have the same abilities ? And a similar question could be asked for Shion too.

Imo a possible hint may lie in the Lotuss Eaters's chapter 53, where we get the explanation for Futo and Miko's suspicious dice scam, as well as a more reliable explanation of Reimu's good fortune from Miko (she has the biggest, most beautifull brains) : Miko's series of dice gambling victories was thanks to Futo sending the flow of the other player's fortune towards Miko, who'll judge if that fortune would mean a win or a loss ; Furthermore Miko also explains that Reimu's great fortune is owed to her unconsciously calling upon the fortune of the divine spirits.

So basically, things MAY go like this :
1 - The world doesn't just memorize but acts favorably or not based on one's fortune. The more you have, the more it'll feel like you're favored by the world
2 - It's possible that there is NO true luck element, only constantly fluctuating fortune levels, and whoever has the most fortune at a given moment will have the odds at the time play in their favor & grant a desired or acceptable result
3 - It's possible that, similar to the fortune slips per character, some people have fixed fortune values of their own based on their nature (in order to explain the likes of Shion or Sagume)
4 - The flow of fortune can be controlled or heavily influenced

At any rate a pretty interesting part of the lore

> Step back out of the room, then, before she can come over here and close us in.

I am sad to learn that the slips were written independent of the involvement of the people they described, because it means it was not the case that the likes of Seija, Mizuchi, and the Watatsukies were waiting in line at the Hakurei Shrine for Reimu to give them fortunes, as well as also implying that Boss Iizunamaru didn't change her bad romance fortune to a good one. I guess not needing to be there does explain how Waka got one, though.

I also didn't realize Aya's was edited. I wonder why Hatate's wasn't?

> "Sure thing."
> Where's the nearest lake that isn't Lake Suwa?

Don't have the brainpower to put more into a response, but nice analysis. Glad to have something like this on the forums.